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Presented to the
URKARYofthe
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO
by
HARRY SUTHERLAND
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2007 with funding from
IVIicrosoft Corporation
http://www.archive.org/details/englishvvomansergOOsanduoft
COLONEL MILITCH, COMMANDANT OF THE SECOND REGIMENT (ON
THE LEFT) AND HIS CHIEF OF STAFF ; WITH THE
REGIMENTAL FLAG
V .:.j,:.,.
An English
Woman-Sergeant
in the
Serbian Army
BY
FLORA SANDES
With an Introduction by
SLAVKO Y. GROUITCH
Secretaire-General of the Serbian Ministry of
Foreign Jffairs
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LONDON, NEW YORK, TORONTO
\b H
INTRODUCTION
Innumerable have been the manifesta-
tions of sympathy, generosity, and of the
sincere desire to help Serbia given by the
British people to their little Ally since the
very beginning of the War. No words
could ever express the deep gratitude of
the Serbian Nation for the splendid ser-
vices rendered by the many British Medical
Missions, whose staffs, men and women,
have nursed the sick and wounded with-
out a thought for the hardships and
dangers to which they have been person-
ally exposed, and which, especially during
the typhus epidemic and, later on, during
the Great Retreat, were very serious
indeed. British women have played a
vi INTRODUCTION
most prominent part in this humanitarian
work of charity and mercy, and some of
them have even given their lives for the
Cause.
When the history of their splendid
achievements is written — as I hope will be
done some day— the name of Miss Flora
Sandes will certainly figure in it with a
special acknowledgment. In the interest-
ing pages which follow she will herself
give a vivid description of her experiences
during the Retreat in the ranks of the
Serbian Army, in which, I believe, she
was the only foreign woman allowed to
serve in a fighting capacity. That in itself
speaks very highly of the esteem and
confidence in which she is held in Serbia.
But she only took to a rifle when there was
no more nursing to be done, as, owing to
INTRODUCTION vii
the Army retreating, the wounded could
not be picked up and had to be left behind.
Before that she had worked in Serbia for
eighteen months as a voluntary nurse,
practically without interruption, having
left the country but twice, and that on a
short visit to London to collect funds and
bring back with her dressings and other
hospital supplies which were badly wanted.
During the typhus epidemic she volun-
teered to go to Valjevo, which was the
centre of the disease and where eight
Serbian doctors and many nurses had
already succumbed. The same fate very
nearly overtook her, but fortunately she
recovered and resumed immediately her
self-imposed duty.
Such examples of self-sacrifice, added to
so many others given by British men and
viii f" INTRODUCTION
I
women in Serbia, have implanted in the
hearts of the Serbians a deep love and
admiration for Great Britain, who may
well be proud of such sons and daughters.
SLAVKO Y. GROUITCH,
Secretaire-General of the
Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
PAGE
Rejoining the Serbians, November, 1915 —
The Second Regimental Ambulance 1
CHAPTER II
A Serbian Ambulance at Work — We Start
to Retreat ..... 22
CHAPTER III
A Ride to Kalabac and a Battle in the
Snow 46
CHAPTER IV
I Meet the Fourth Company — A Cold
Night Ride 77
CHAPTER V
We Say Good-bye to Serbia and take to
the Albanian Mountains . . .104
ix
CONTENTS
CHAPTER VI
PAGE
Fighting on Mount Chukus . . .126
CHAPTER VII
Elbasan — We push on towards the
Coast 148
CHAPTER VIII
Serbian Christmas Day at Durazzo —
Aeroplane Raids .... 170
CHAPTER IX
We Go to Corfu 192
S^ CHAPTER X
The " Slava Day " of the Second Regi-
ment 230
CHAPTER I
REJOINING THE SERBIANS, NOVEMBER, 1915—
THE SECOND REGIMENTAL AMBULANCE
Events moved so rapidly in Serbia after
the Bulgarians declared war that when I
reached Salonica last winter I found it
full of nurses and doctors who had been
home on leave and who had gone out there
to rejoin their various British hospital
units, only to find themselves unable to
get up into the country.
I had been home for a holiday after
working in Serbian hospitals since the
very beginning of the war, but when
things began to look so serious again I
2 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
hurried back to Serbia. We had rather
an eventful voyage, as the French boat
I was on was carrying ammunition as
well as passengers, and the submarines
seemed to make a dead set at us. At
Malta we were held up for three days,
waiting for the coast to clear. The third
night I had been dining ashore, and on
getting back to the boat, about eleven,
found the military police in charge, and
the ship and all the passengers being
searched for a spy and some missing
documents. We were not allowed to go
down to our cabins until they had been
thoroughly ransacked, but as nothing in-
criminating was found we eventually pro-
ceeded on our way, with a torpedo-
destroyer on either side of us as an escort.
The boats were always slung out in
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 3
readiness, and we were cautioned never
to lose sight of our life-belts. We had to
put in again at Piraeus, and again at
Lemnos for a few days, so that it was
November 3rd before we finally reached
Salonica — having taken fourteen days
from. Marseilles — only to find that the
railway line had been cut, and there wa&
no possible way of getting up into Serbia.
My intention had been to go back into
my old Serbian hospital at Valjevo ta
work under the Serbian Red Cross as I
did before ; that was out of the question
now, of course, as Valjevo was already in
the hands of the Austrians, but I thought
I might get up to Nish and get my orders
from the President of the Serbian Red
Cross there. I inquired from a Serbian
officer staying at the hotel, who had just
4 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
ridden down from Prisren, if it would be
possible to ride up into Serbia, but he
most strongly discouraged all idea of
riding, saying that with every facility at
his disposal, and relays of fresh horses
all along the route, it had taken him ten
days to ride from Prisren to Salonica, and
that during that time he had frequently
been unable to obtain food either for
himself or his horses ; that, furthermore,
it was very dangerous even with an escort,
as part of the way was through hostile
Albania, and that all the horses were
needed for the Arrny. I gave up that
idea, therefore, and set to work to find out
where I could come into touch with the
Serbians, and finally foimd I could go to
Monastir, or, to call it by its Serbian
name, Bitol. Accordingly, I, with four
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 5
other nurses and a doctor whose acquaint-
ance I had made on the boat, who also found
themselves unable to reach their original
destinations, left for Bitol the next day.
Arrived at Bitol, I at once made in-
quiries about the next step farther, and
found that Prilip, about twenty-five miles
farther on, was still in the hands of the
Serbians, though its evacuation was ex-
pected any minute, and even now the
road from Bitol to Prilip was not con-
sidered safe on account of marauding
Bulgarian comitadjes, or irregulars. How-
ever, the English Consul had to go out
there, and he said he would take us with
him to see how the land lay, and whether
we were needed in the hospital there.
I spent the afternoon prowling round
Bitol, mostly in the Turkish quarter.
6 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
The next day we went with the Consul
to Prilip — though up to the last moment
I was afraid we should not go, as there
was so much talk about the road not
being safe — some of us in the touring car
and the rest in a motor-lorry, with an
escort of Serbian soldiers, all armed to the
teeth. I took my camp bed and blankets
with me, on the off chance of being able
to stay at Prilip, as I was gradually edging
my way up to the Front, leaving the rest
of my baggage in Bitol to be sent after me.
We got there without any mishap, keeping
a sharp look-out for Bulgarian patrols.
We found a Serbian military hospital at
Prilip, and I asked the Upravnik or
Director if I might stay and work there,
to which he consented, but added that he
was afraid that it would not be for long.
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 7
as they were expecting to have to fly
before the Bulgarians any day. I ac-
cordingly got a room at the hotel, and the
Consul left me an orderly to look after me,,
named Joe, who could speak a little
English. I was very pleased at getting
into a Serbian hospital again in spite of
all difficulties, as the opinion in Salonica
seemed to be that it was impossible ;
but I must say I felt rather lost when
the cars went back that evening and I was-
left alone, the only Englishwoman in Prilip.
The first thing I did was to turn all the
furniture, including the bed, out of the
room in the tenth-rate pub., which was.
the best hotel that Prilip boasted, and
made Joe scrub the floor and put in my
own camp bed.
I take the following extract out of my
B2
8 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
diary, written on my first night in
Prilip :
''Monday, 8th, 8.30 p.m.— I am sitting
up in bed in my sleeping sack, writing this
in a very small room in S Hotel,
Prilip. The room contains (besides my
camp bed) a rickety chair, and a small
table with my little rubber basin, a cracked
mirror and my faithful tea-basket. From
the cafe below comes a deafening chorus
of Serbian soldiers. I am glad there is a
good lock on the door, as someone is
making a violent effort to come in, and
from the fierce altercation going on be-
tween him and the boy-chambermaid,
scraps of which I can understand, he is
apparently under the impression that I have
taken his room — I may have for all I know,
but anyhow the proprietor gave it to me.
I
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 9
" The view from my window is not
calculated to inspire confidence either. It
looks on to a stableyard full of pigs,
donkeys and the most villainous-looking
Turks squatting about at their supper.
These, I tell myself, are the ones who will
come in and cut my throat if Prilip is
taken to-night, as I don't think any
responsible person in the town knows I
am here. However, if I live through the
night things will probably look more
cheery in the morning."
In the middle of the night I was
awakened by another fearful racket in
the passage. " That's done it," I thought,
sitting up in bed with my electric torch
in one hand and my service revolver in
the other, " it's like my rotten luck that
the Bulgars should pitch on to-night to
10 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
•come in and sack the town." However,
s. very few minutes convinced me that it
was only two drunks coming up to bed,
^nd, telling myself not to be more of a fool
than nature intended, I turned over and
went to sleep again.
I think my morbid reflections must
have been brought on by the supper I
had had. Joe, my orderly, had, for reasons
best known to himself, taken me to a
different restaurant to the one where we
had been to lunch with the Consul, assur-
ing me that it was much better ; it was
not, very much worse, in fact, though I
should not have thought such a thing
could be possible. It was full of soldiers
and comitadjes drinking. At first I could
get no food at all, and when it did come it
was uneatable. I had supper with an
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 11
American doctor I met in the town next
night, and he informed me that food was
so scarce and dear in Prihp that to get
anything of a meal you had to have
your meat in one restaurant, your pota-
toes in another, and your coffee in a
third !
Next morning I went round to the
hospital, and in the afternoon one of the
doctors took me round and introduced
me to the Serbian Chief of Police, who
was most friendly and polite, got me a
nice little room close to the hospital, and
apologised for not being able to ask me
to come to his house as his guest as his
wife was ill. This is the sort of courtesy
that has always been extended to me in
Serbia ; they think the best of everything
they can offer is not too good for the
12 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
stranger within their gates, and I began
to feel much cheered up.
There were not very many wounded in
the hospital, but a great many sick, and
dysentery cases beginning to come in
rapidly. I was soon quite at home there,
being used to the ways of Serbian hospi-
tals. The Director was going to Bitol for
a few days, and I asked him to ask the
head of the Sanitary Department there,
Dr. Nikotitch, if I might join a regimental
ambulance as nurse, as I heard that the
ambulance of the Second Regiment was
some miles farther up the road, just
behind the Front. The Second and Four-
teenth Regiments were then holding the
Baboona Pass, a very strongly fortified
position in the mountains, against the
Bulgarians.
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 13
I stayed about a week in the hospital ;
there was plenty of work to do — in fact,
to have done it properly there would have
been enough for a dozen nurses, as dysen-
tery was rapidly becoming an epidemic,
and the hospital was soon full up ; we
could take in no more. We were fear-
fully short of everything, beds, bedding,
drugs, and we simply had to do the best
we could with practically no kind of
hospital appliances. Any kind of proper
nursing was impossible, most of the
patients lying on the floor in their muddy,
trench- stained uniforms.
One afternoon two of the doctors
motored out to the ambulance of the
Second Regiment and took me with them.
We stopped first at the ambulance of the
Fourteenth, where we found twenty
14 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
unfortunate dysentery cases lying on the
bare ground in two ragged tents groaning.
We had a long chat with the doctor of
the Second Regimental ambulance, and
had coffee and cigarettes in his room — a
loft over the stable. That is to say, I
did not do much of the talking as he was
a Greek, and besides his own language
only talked Turkish and not very fluent
Serbian, although later on, strange to say,
when I joined the same ambulance, we
used to carry on long conversations
together in a kind of mongrel lingo very
largely helped out by signs.
We visited a large empty barracks on
our way back, and made arrangements
for it to be turned into a dysentery hos-
pital, as this disease was beginning to
assume serious proportions, and our
FRENCH STEAMER WITH BOATS SLUNG OUT
READY AND ESCORT
Page 2
AMBULANCE OF SECOND REGIMENT. OX WAGGONS WHICH
HAVE JUST BROUGHT IN WOUNDED
Page 15
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 15
hospital was full up. This was never
carried out, however, owing to the Bul-
garians' rapid advance a few days later.
The next day the Director came back,
and brought with him papers whereby I
was officially attached to the ambulance
of the Second Regiment ; and it was part
of my extraordinary luck to have just hit
on this particular regiment, which is ac-
knowledged to be the finest in the Serbian
Army. Everybody was extremely kind to
me in the hospital, and all the doctors
asked me to stay there and work, saying I
could have no idea of the hardships of
ambulance life; but as I knew that it
would not be many days before we all
had to clear out of Prilip before the
advancing Bulgarians, and that would
mean my going back to Salonica, and
16 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
losing all chance of staying with the
Serbians (whom I had grown thoroughly
attached to in my work among them for
the last year and a half), I adhered to my
resolution to throw in my lot with the
Army.
I always had my meals at the hospital
now, and we had quite a merry supper
that night, and they all drank my health,
declaring they would see me back in three
days, when I had been frozen out of my
small tent on the hills, where it was already
bitterly cold. The next afternoon I went
all round the hospital and said good-bye
to everyone ; I was very sorry to leave
my patients, they are so affectionate, and
always so grateful for anything one does
for them. One young soldier was my
special pet; he had been driven mad
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 17
from the shock of a shell bursting close
to him, though he was not wounded. He
was such a nice gentle lad, and I used to
spend a good bit of time with him, coaxing
him to swallow spoonfuls of milk, as he
would not take anything from anyone
else, though the Bolnichars — hospital
orderlies — were very kind to him. I heard
afterwards that he lived till the hospital
was evacuated, but died at Bitol. A
good many of the men were from the
Second Regiment, and when they heard
I was going to their ambulance we only
said au revoir. They assured me we
should meet again when they were sent
back to their regiment, as they would
come and see me directly they had the
smallest pain.
It was rather late in the day when Joe
18 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
and I finally set out in a very rickety
carriage commandeered by martial law,
with a very unwilling driver, and a horse
that could hardly crawl. The harness,
which was tied up with bits of string, kept
coming to pieces, and the driver kept
stopping to repair it. Joe began to look
very uneasy, and kept peering round in
the gathering dusk for any signs of wander-
ing Bulgarian patrols, or comitadjes, as it
was a very lonely road. At last, after
what seemed an interminable time, we
arrived at the ambulance, which was on
the grass by the side of the road. They
were not expecting me then as it was late,
and the Serbians turn in soon after sun-
set. There was apparently nowhere to
sleep and nothing to eat. One of them
took us round to the doctor's quarters.
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 19
the same loft I had visited a few days
before, not far from the ambulance. He
turned out full of apologies, and said that
he had had notice that I was coming that
day, but that as it was so late he had
given me up.
It seemed a bit of a problem where
I was to sleep, but eventually some
of the soldiers turned out of one of
their small bivouac tents. These tents
are only a sort of little lean-to's, which you
crawl into, just the height of a rifle, two
of which can be used instead of poles.
You seem a bit cramped at first, but after
I had lived in one for a couple of months
I did not notice it. All the tents were
bunched up together, touching each other,
with four soldiers, or hospital orderlies,
in each. I insisted, to their great surprise,
20 REJOINING THE SERBIANS
in having mine moved to a clean spot
about fifteen yards away from the others,
and some more or less clean hay put in to
lie upon. There was a good deal of ex-
citement and confusion, the whole camp
turning out and assisting. They could
not imagine why I wanted it moved, and
declared that the Bulgarian comitadjes
would come down in the night and cut my
throat before the sentry knew they were
there. Afterwards, when I was more used
to war, and accustomed to sleeping in the
middle of a regiment, and to sleeping
when and where one could, in any amount
of noise, I used to laugh at my scruples
then, and only wondered they were all as
good-tempered and patient as they were
with what must have seemed to them my
extraordinary English ideas. The doctor
REJOINING THE SERBIANS 21
sent me down some supper of bread and
cheese and eggs, and presently came down
himself and sat on the grass beside me as
I ate it, and altogether they all did their
best to make me comfy, and were as
amiable as only Serbians can be when
you rouse them out in the middle of the
night and turn everything upside down.
It reminded me somewhat of my arrival
in Valjevo, at the beginning of the typhus
epidemic, when owing to the vagaries of
the Serbian trains I was landed at the
hospital at 3 a.m., after everyone had
given me up. After I had finished my
supper I crawled into my tent, tightly
rolled myself up into the blankets as it was
a very cold night, and slept like a top on
my bed of hay.
CHAPTER II
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE AT WORK —
WE START TO RETREAT
Next morning we all turned out at day-
break, and I got a better view of my
surroundings. The ambulance itself con-
sisted of one largish tent, where the
patients lie on their clothes on very
muddy straw, until they can be removed
to the base hospital by bullock-wagon.
This is done as often as transport permits.
There were a few cases of dressings,
drugs, etc., in the tent, and a small table
for writing at. There were about twenty
patients in at one time, some of them sick
22
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 23
and some wounded. About a dozen little
tents, similar to mine, for the soldiers and
ambulance men, and two or three wagons
completed the outfit.
There was a Serbian girl, about seven-
teen, helping ; she was very unlike any
other Serbian woman I had ever met,
lived and dressed just like the soldiers,
and was very good to the sick men. She
spoke German very well, so that we
understood each other and became very
good friends ; she gave me lots of tips,
and though I had been under the im-
pression that I knew something about
camping out and roughing it, having done
so already in various parts of the world,
she could walk rings round me in that
respect. The first thing the men did
after I had had some tea with them by
C2
24 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
the camp fire was to set to work to con-
vince me of the error of my ways, and to
move my little tent back to its old spot
before any harm could happen to me. We
don't have breakfast in Serbia, but have
an early glass of tea, very hot and sweet,
without milk.
The doctor came down shortly after-
wards to prescribe for the men who were
sick, and then a couple of orderlies and
myself dressed the wounded ones, those
who were able to walk coming out of the
tent and squatting down on the grass
outside, where there was more room, and
light enough to see what you were doing.
They kept straggling in all day from
Baboona, where there was a battle going
on ; it was not far away, and the guns
sounded very plain. There were not very
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 25
many seriously wounded, but I am afraid
that was because the path down the
mountains is so steep that it is almost
impossible to get a badly wounded man
down on a stretcher. Any who are able
to walk down do so, and they were glad to
get their wounds dressed and be able to lie
down. At lunch-time we knocked off for
a couple of hours, and I went back with
the doctor to his loft. We had lunch in
great style, sitting on his bed, there being
no chairs, and with a blue pocket-hand-
kerchief spread out between us for a
table-cloth. He said they were expecting
to have a retreat at any moment, and that
we must always be in readiness for it as
soon as the order arrived. All the patients
we had were to go off that afternoon
if the bullock- wagons arrived. This ques-
26 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
tion of transport is always a terrible
problem ; in many cases bullock- wagons
are the only things that will stand the
rough tracks, although here there was a
good road all the way to Bitol, and had we
had a service of motor-cars we could have
saved the poor fellows an immense amount
of suffering. Imagine yourself with a
shattered leg lying in company with three
or four others on the floor of a springless
bullock- wagon, jolting like that over the
rough roads for twenty or thirty miles.
When I was in Kragujewatz we used to
get in big batches of wounded who had
travelled like that for three or four days
straight from the Front, with only the first
rough dressing which each man carries in
his pocket.
The wagons came that afternoon, but
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 27
only two or three for the lying- down
patients ; several poor chaps who were so
sick they could hardly crawl had to turn
out and start on a weary walk of a good
many miles to the nearest hospital at
Prilip. One man protested that he would
never do it, and I really didn't think he
could, and said so; however, the ambu-
lance men, who were well up to their work,
explained that it was absolutely impera-
tive that all should get off into safety day
by day, otherwise when the order came
suddenly to retreat we might find our-
selves landed with an overflowing tentful
of sick and wounded men, and no trans-
port available on the spot. " Go, brother,"
they said kindly, " Idi polako, polako "
("Go slowly, slowly"), and fortified with
a drink of cognac from the ambulance
28 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
stores, and a handful of cigarettes from
me, he and the others like him set off.
We all turned in prepared that evening,
and I was cautioned to take not even my
boots off. Later on, sleeping in one's
clothes didn't strike me as anything un-
usual ; in fact, two months later, when we
had finished marching and arrived at
Durazzo, it was some time before I
remembered that it was usual to undress
when you went to bed, and that once
upon a time, long, long ago, I used to do
the same.
In the middle of the night a special
messenger arrived with a carriage from
the English Consul at Bitol, advising me
to come back at once, and that a motor-
car would meet me in Prilip, and take me
back to Bitol. I knew perfectly well that
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 29
I should not be able to find the motor-car
in the middle of the night in Prilip, which
is as dark as the nethermost regions,
there not being a lamp in the town, and
that it would probably mean sitting up in
the carriage in one of those dirty little
streets all night ; so I said all right, I
would see about it in the morning, and
went to bed again. In the morning I had
another look at the telegram, and as it
was not an order to go back, but only
advising me strongly to do so, I said I
meant to stop. They all seemed very
pleased because I said I wanted to stick
with the Serbians, and, as we all sat round
the camp fire in the bitter cold of a
November sunrise, we drank the healths of
England and Serbia together in tin mugs
full of strong, hot tea.
30 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
Later on during the day came another
telegram, and I must say that the EngHsh
Consul at Bitol was a perfect trump in the
way he did his duty by stray English
subjects and looked after their safety,
before he finally had himself to leave for
Salonica. A Serbian officer was sent out
from somewhere, and he said that if I
liked to throw in my lot with them and
stop he would send out a wagon and
horses, in which I could live and sleep, and
in which I could carry my luggage. I
hadn't very much of the latter, and what
I had I was perfectly willing to abandon
if it was any bother, but he wouldn't hear
of that ; and in due course the wagon
arrived, and proved, when a little hay had
been put on the floor to sleep on, a most
snug abode.
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 31
The next day the wounded kept strag-
gling in all day, faster than we could
evacuate them, and when the order came
at ten o'clock that night that the regiment
was forced to retreat from Baboona, and
that the ambulance was to start at once,
we had sixteen wounded in the tent,
twelve of them unable to walk. The
Serbian ambulances travel very light, and
half an hour after receiving our orders we
were on the move, the men being adepts
at packing up tents and starting at a
moment's notice. At the last moment,
while the big ambulance tent was being
taken down, a man with a very bad
shrapnel wound in the ankle was carried
in, and as it was blowing a gale, and we
couldn't keep a lamp alight, I dressed it
by the light of a pocket electric torch,
32 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
which I fortunately had with me. They
said at first that he would have to go on
as he was, but as I knew very well that it
might be three or four days before he
would get another dressing I insisted on
them getting out some iodine, gauze, etc.,
and kneeling in the mud, and with some
difficulty under the circumstances as the
tent was being taken down over my head,
I cut off his boot and bloody bandages
(he had been wounded in the morning)
and cleaned and dressed the wound. He
was awfully good, poor fellow, though it
hurt him horribly, and he hardly made a
murmur. Then two ambulance men car-
ried him out to the ox-wagon, three of
which had appeared from somewhere, I
don't know where. I found the Kid, as
I called her, had been working like a
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 33
Trojan in the pitch dark and pelting rain
helping the men through the thick slippery-
mud down the bank to the road, and had
settled four men, lying down, in each
wagon, that being all they could hold,
and had also decided the knotty point
which should be the four unlucky ones
who had to walk— these four being, I may
say, quite well enough to walk, but
naturally not being anxious to do so.
When they were all started off, she and I
clambered into our wagon, and the whole
cavalcade set off in the pitch dark, not
having the faintest idea (at least, we had
not, I don't know if anybody else had)
where we were going to travel to or how
long for. We were a long cavalcade with
all the ambulance staff, the Komorra or
transport, and a good many soldiers all
34 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
armed, and a most unpleasant night we
had rumbhng along in the dark, halting
every few miles, not knowing whether the
Bulgars had got there first and cut the
road in front of us, or what was hap-
pening. It was bitterly cold besides, and
as the Kid and I were black and blue from
jolting about on the floor of our wagon I
began to wonder how the poor wounded
ever survived it at all.
A little way on we picked up a young
recruit who said he was wounded and
couldn't walk ; our driver demurred,
saying that he had had orders that no one
else was to use our wagon, but we said,
of course, the poor boy was to come in
if he was wounded. He lay on my feet
all night, which didn't add to my com-
fort, though it kept them warm. He
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 35
was evidently starving, so we gave him
half a loaf of bread that we had with us,
and some brandy out of my water-bottle,
and he went to sleep.
Putting brandy in my water-bottle had
been suggested to me by a tale a young
Austrian officer, a prisoner, who was one
of my patients in Kragujewatz hospital,
told me. Poor boy, he had been badly
wounded in the leg, and was telling me
some of his experiences during the war
and about the terrible journey after he
was wounded, travelling in a bullock cart.
He said he had a flask full of brandy,
and that was a help while it lasted. When
that was all gone he filled up the flask
with tea, which was pretty good, too, as
it had a stray flavour of brandy still, and
then when he had drunk all that he put
36 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
water in, and that had the flavour of
tea !
The next morning our " wounded hero "
hopped off quite unhurt, and we couldn't
help laughing at the way we had been
done. It was a bitterly cold dawn, and
we found to our sorrow that the recruit
had not put the cork back in my water-
bottle, and the rest of the brandy had
upset, as had also a bottle of raspberry
syrup which the Kid set great store by.
I once upset a pot of gooseberry jam in a
small motor-car, and it permeated every-
thing until I had to take the car to a
garage to be washed, and go and take a
bath myself before I could get rid of it;
but it was not a patch in the way of
stickiness to a pot of raspberry syrup let
loose in a jolting wagon, and we were very
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 37
glad to get out at daybreak, after eight
hours' travelling, to walk a bit to stretch
our legs, and also to wipe off some of the
stickiness with some grass.
We came through Prilip that night,
and were rather doubtful how we shoiild
get through, but though the people
standing about glowered at us, and we
heard a few shots in the distance, nothing
much happened, and only one man got
slightly hurt.
We arrived somewhere between Prilip
and Bitol at sunrise, and made a big fire
and waited for further orders when the
Colonel of the regiment should arrive.
Presently he rode up with his staff, and I
was introduced to Colonel Militch, the
Commandant of the Second Regiment.
My first impression of him was that he
38 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
was a real sport, and later on, when I got
to know him very well and had the privi-
lege of being a soldier in his regiment,
I found out that not only was he a sport,
but one of the bravest soldiers and most
chivalrous gentlemen anyone ever served
under. We stood roimd the fire for some
time and had a great powwow; my
Serbian was still in an embryo stage, but
the Colonel spoke German.
We were all very cold and hungry, but
one of the officers of the staff, who was a
person of resource, made some rather
queerish coffee in a big tin mug on the
fire, and we all had some, and it tasted
jolly good and hot, and then the Colonel
produced a bottle of liqueur from a little
handbag, and we drank each other's
healths. I got to know that little hand-
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 39
bag well later — it used always to miracu-
lously appear when everybody was cold^
tired and dying for a drink.
After a couple of hours the ambulance
went on about a mile and pitched camp,
and I went with them. The Kid went to
sleep in the wagon and I did the same
outside on the grass. The doctor sent me
a piece of bread and cheese, which I
casually ate on the spot, not liking to
wake the Kid up, but afterwards I was
filled with remorse for my thoughtlessness,
when I was convicted by her later on for
not being a good comrade at all, as it
appeared it was the only eatable thing in
camp ; but, as I was new and green at
" retreating," at that time it never
dawned on me : I learnt better ways^
later on. I made her some tea with
D2
40 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
my tea-basket, but it was not very
satisfying.
Later on in the day the Commandant
of the Bitol Division, Colonel Wasitch,
and an English officer came up in a car.
I was introduced to them, and went with
them in the car somewhere up the road to
visit a camp. The Commandant of the
division went off to attend to business,
leaving the English officer and myself to
amuse ourselves as we liked.
Here we were witnesses of a case of
corporal punishment. I relate it because
some people think this is quite a
common occurrence ; it is not, cruelty
is absolutely foreign to their natures.
Some people once talked of setting
up a branch of the " Prevention of
Cruelty to Animals" in Serbia, and were
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 41
asked in astonishment what work they
supposed they would find to do ; who ever
heard of a Serbian being cruel to child or
animal ? Corporal pimishment, that is to
say, a certain number of strokes with a
stick (maximum 25 — schoolboys will know
on what part), is the legitimate and recog-
nised way of punishing in the Serbian
Army, and the sentence is carried out
by a non-commissioned officer. As
an officer once explained to me, some
punishment you must have in the in-
terests of discipline, and what else can you
do in wartime, when you are on the move
every day ? Particularly was it so at
this most critical juncture, when it would
have been fatal for the whole Army
had the men been allowed to get out of
hand.
42 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
This question of corporal punishment
in the Serbian Army has so frequently
been brought up to me by English and
French officers that I purposely mention
it, as I have always tried to thoroughly
disabuse their minds of any idea that the
men were indiscriminately knocked about.
I may add that it is not so very many
years since flogging was abolished in our
own Navy, and no doubt in course of
time the Serbian Army will follow suit.
The most popular officer I knew, who
was absolutely adored by his own men,
was extremely ready to award corporal
punishment. " My soldiers have got
to be soldiers,^ ^ he replied curtly to
me once, and his men certainly were.
These things always depend largely on the
j)articular officer, of course. I think the
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 43
Serbian soldier, more than anyone else I
have ever come across, can excel as a
" passive resister " when he is under an
unpopular officer ; while all the time
keeping himself just within the bounds of
discipline, he will contrive to avoid doing
anything he does not wish to do, while he
is extraordinarily " clannish " and loyal
to one whom he likes. In the critical
moments in a battle it is not the question
whether an officer is " active " or
" reserve " that counts, or whether he
has passed through his military academy
or risen from the ranks, but whether the
men will follow him or not.
Captain and I walked back to the
ambulance together and found that some
of the orderlies had got a pig from some-
where and were roasting it with a long
44 A SERBIAN AMBULANCE
pole through it over the camp fire : it
smelt jolly good, and as we were very
hungry, having had nothing to eat but a
piece of bread and cheese, we accepted
their invitation to have supper with them
with alacrity. As soon as it was cooked
we all sat round the big fire in a semi-
circle, and ate roast pig with our fingers,
there being no plates or cutlery available,
and Captain said he had never
tasted anything so good in his life, and
wished he could come and join our
ambulance altogether.
At some of the other fires dotted about
they were roasting some unwary geese
which had been foolish enough to stray
roimd our camp. As the inhabitants of
the houses had fled leaving them behind
we certainly could not call it looting.
A SERBIAN AMBULANCE 45
Looting was very firmly checked ; the
Serbian is far from being the undisci-
plined soldier in that respect that some
people suppose.
CHAPTER III
A RIDE TO KALABAC AND A BATTLE IN THE
SNOW
It snowed hard in the night and most of
the next day and was bitterly cold, blowing
a gale, but my wagon was a good bit
snugger than the tent. The Colonel and
his staff had quarters in a loft over a little
cafe just along the road, and after lunch
the Commander of the division, who
came with two English officers, took the
Kid and me with them in their cars some
miles back along the road towards Prilip,
where we all walked about and inspected
the new positions part of the regiment
46
A RIDE TO KALABAC 47
was to take up. The Kid went back to
Bitol in the ear with them that evening
to fetch some clothes, and I never saw her
again, though I beUeve she did want to
come back to us later on.
I used to sit over the camp fires in the
evenings with the soldiers, and we used to
exchange cigarettes and discuss the war
by the hour. I was picking up a few
more words of Serbian every day, and
they used to take endless trouble to make
me understand, though our conversations
were very largely made up of signs, but
I understood what they meant if I couldn't
always understand what they said. It
was heartbreaking the way they used to
ask me every evening, " Did I think the
English were coming to help them ? " and
"Would they send cannon?" The Bui-
48 A RIDE TO KALABAC
garians had big guns, and we had nothing
but some httle old cannon about ten
years old, which were really only what the
comitadjes used to use. If we had had a
few big guns we could have held the
Baboona Pass practically for any length
of time, for it was an almost impregnable
position. I used to cheer them up as best
I could, and said I was sure that some
guns would come, and that even if they
did not they must not think that the
English had deserted them, as I supposed
they had big plans in their head that we
knew nothing about, and that though we
might have to retreat now everything
would come right in the end. It was
touching the faith they had in the English,
whom they all described as going " slowly
but surely." They were very much
A RIDE TO KALABAC 49
excited when they saw the two Enghsh
officers, as they were sure they had come
to say some Enghsh troops were coming.
One day, however, one thousand new
Enghsh rifles did come, and there was great
rejoicing thereat.
With the courtesy which always dis-
tinguishes the Serbian peasant, they used
always to stand up and make room for me,
and bring a box for me to sit on in the
most comfortable place by the fire, out of
the smoke, and I used to spend hours
like this with them. Under happier cir-
cumstances they would all have been
singing their national songs and dancing,
but, though there were many fine singers
among them, nothing would induce them
to sing : they were too broken-hearted at
being driven back. One man did start a
50 A RIDE TO KALABAC
song one night to please me, but he broke
down in the middle and said he knew I
would understand why he could not
sing.
There was deep snow on the ground, and
it was bitterly cold, and the men used to
anxiously ask me if I managed to keep
warm at night, as they huddled up to-
gether, four in one tiny tent, for warmth,
and seemed to rather fear that they might
find me frozen to death some morning in
my wagon, but I was really quite warm
enough.
The next day, while we were doing the
dressings, a man came in who had walked
from Nish, twenty-two days' tramp. He
was a cheery soul, and said he felt very fit,
but he looked as thin as a rake. We all
crowded round him to hear the news. He
Ci
^/
A RIDE TO KALABAC 51
said that the town of Nish was evacuated
and everyone gone to Krushavatz.
Commandant Mihtch told me he was
sending for his second horse, so that I
could ride her. When she arrived she
proved to be a very fine white half-Arab,
who could gallop like the wind, and I
grew very fond of her. She had a passion
for sugar, and always expected a bit when
she saw me. The Commandant had
moved his quarters a few miles farther
up the road towards Prilip to a small
deserted hahn, or inn, consisting of two
small rooms by the roadside. It was close
to the village of Topolchar. I had been
cautioned not to stray away from the
camp by myself, as it was very unsafe ;
only a few days before Bulgarian comi-
tadjes had swooped down and taken
52 A RIDE TO KALABAC
prisoner a Serbian soldier who had gone
to fetch some water not a quarter of a
mile from his own camp. One bright
sunny morning, however, the hills looked
so tempting that I went for a stroll and
wandered on farther than I intended. I
was out of sight of the camp, when sud-
denly I heard voices behind some trees,
though I could not see anybody, and I
knew that none of oiu* men were camping
near. Discretion conquering curiosity,
I beat a dignified retreat at a brisk
walk, as I was quite unarmed at the time,
and they told me when I got back it was
a good thing I did. I took no more
constitutionals over the hills while in
that neighbourhood, anyhow, for I had
no wish to cut off my career with the
Army by suddenly disappearing, as no
A RIDE TO KALABAX: 53
one would know what had become of
me.
One day I rode over on Diana, my
white mare, to see the Commandant and
his staff at the hahn. They all wel-
comed me most warmly, inviting me to
stop to supper, sleep there, and ride out
next day with them to the moimtain of
Kalabac, to visit the positions there. I
accepted joyfully. They said I could
either sleep there near the stove or have
my wagon brought up, if I was not afraid
of being too cold. I decided in favour of
the wagon, as the hahn was already
pretty crowded ; so they telephoned for
it, and in due course it arrived with my
orderly. It was a grey-covered wagon,
and I had christened it "My little grey
home in the west." A house on wheels is
54 A RIDE TO KALABAC
an ideal arrangement, as if you take it
into your head to sleep anywhere else you
go off and your house simply follows you.
It was planted exactly opposite the door,
with a sentry to guard me.
The Commandant, in spite of all his
troubles, was full of fun, and even in the
darkest and most anxious hours in the
tragic weeks that followed kept up every-
one's spirits and thought of everyone's
comfort before his own. After a most
hilarious supper I turned in, as we were
to make an early start next morning.
Next day the Commandant, his Adju-
tant and I, with four armed gendarmes,
rode off to Kalabac. It was a lovely day,
and we had about two hours' ride across
coimtry to the first line of trenches. The
Commandant and I used to have a
A RIDE TO KALABAC 55
race whenever we got to a good bit of
ground. He was a fine rider, and, as the
horses were pretty well matched, we used
to get up a break-neck speed sometimes,
and had some splendid gallops. About a
year before in Kragujewatz I was riding
with a Serbian soldier who had been sent
with a horse for me, and he said : " What
did I want to be a nurse for ? " and tried
to persuade me not to go back to the
hospital, but to join the Army then and
there, regardless of my poor patients
expecting me back.
The first line of trenches that we came
to were little shallow trenches dotted
about on the hillside, with about a dozen
men in each. We sat in one of them and
drank coffee, and I thought then that I
should be able to tell them at home that
E2
56 A RIDE TO KALABAC
I had been in a real Serbian trench, Httle
thinking at the time that I was going
to do it in good earnest later on under
different circumstances.
After that we went on up to another
position right at the top of Kalabac.
It was a tremendous ride, and I could
never have believed that horses could
have climbed such steep places, or have
kept their feet on some of the obsta-
cles we went over, but these horses
were trained to it, and could get through
or over anything. Just the last bit of
the way we all had to dismount, and,
leaving the horses with the gendarmes,
did the rest on foot. There was no need
for trenches there, as it was very rocky,
and there was plenty of natural cover.
Major B and another officer met us
A RIDE TO KALABAC 57
near the top, and he and the Commandant
went off to discuss things. It happened
to be Captain Pesio's " Slava " day.
This " Slava " day is an institution
peculiar only to the Serbians, and which
they always keep most faithfully. Every
family and every regiment has one. It is
the day of their particular patron saint,
and is handed down from father to son.
It is kept up for three days with as much
jollification as circumstances permit, even
in wartime. I have been the guest at
plenty of other Slava days in Serbia,
but I never enjoyed anything so much as
I did that one. We sat round the fire on
boxes or logs of wood under the shelter
of a big overhanging rock, with a most
gorgeous panorama of the country stretch-
ing for miles round, and had a very festive
58 A RIDE TO KALABAC
lunch, and all drank Captain Pesio's
health. In the middle of lunch I had
my first sight of the enemy, a Bulgarian
patrol in the distance, and orders were
promptly given to some of our men to
go down and head them off. The men
all seemed to be in high spirits up there,
in spite of the cold, and some of them
were roasting a pig, although I suppose
that was a " Slava " luxury for them, not
to be had every day.
It was eviening by the time we left, and
we slipped and slid down the mountain
again by moonlight. When we got back
to the first trenches which we had visited
we made a short halt, and sat in an
officer's little tent and drank tea. He had
certainly not been at war for four years
without learning how to make himself
A RIDE TO KALABAC 59
comfortable under adverse circumstances,
and had brought it down to a fine art.
He had a tiny Httle tent, one side of which
was pitched against a bank, and in the
bank there was a hole, with a large fire in
it, and a sort of timnel leading up to the
outer air for a chimney. His blanket
was spread on some boughs woven together
for a bed, and he was as snug and warm
as a toast when he did get a chance to
sleep in his tent, which was apparently
not very often. He was very popular
with everyone, and the Commandant
spoke particularly of his bravery. We
were quite sorry to leave and turn out
into the cold night air.
We had a long ride home, ending up
with a hard gallop along the last bit of
road, and it was late when we got back to
60 A RIDE TO KALABAC
the hahn. There was a big fire going in
the iron stove, and we soon thawed out.
The Commandant sat down at his table
and dictated endless despatches to his
Adjutant, while I dosed on his camp bed
till about ten, when he finished his work
for the time being and we had supper.
Every now and then there would be a rap
at the door, and an exhausted, half-frozen
rider would come in bearing a despatch from
one of the outlying positions on the hills.
I was very sorry afterwards that I had
not taken my camera with me up to the
positions, but I was not sure at the time
if they would like me to, though after-
wards they told me I might take it any-
where I liked.
There was another small ambulance
here in charge of the proper regimental
A RIDE TO KALABAC 61
doctor, and in the afternoon everyone
was ordered to move up into the
village, Topolchor, and find rooms there.
The soldiers were all delighted at the
prospect of getting under a roof of any
kind, though I felt quite sorry at leaving
my Little Grey Home. The doctor got
me a nice big empty room in what was
formerly the school. There was a pile
of desks and tables filling up one side of
it, and a stove, but otherwise no furniture.
After my orderly had unpacked my camp
bed and lit the stove I had some visitors :
three or four old native women, who came
up and inspected me and all my belong-
ings closely, and seemed deeply impressed
with the extraordinary luxury in which
an Englishwoman lived, with a room to
herself, a bed and sl rubber bath ! I had
62 A RIDE TO KALABAC
been making futile efforts, by the way,
for the last few days to make use of this
same bath, in spite of my orderly's repeated
assurances that you could not have a
bath in wartime, which I found after-
wards to be strictly true. I did not suc-
ceed even here, owing to the lack of water
and anything to carry it in.
The villagers themselves, those who
had not already fled in terror, seemed to
live in the most abject poverty, huddled
together in houses no better than pigsties.
The place was infested by enormous
mongrel dogs, which used to pursue me
in gangs, barking and growling, but they
had a wholesome respect for a stone, and
never came to close quarters.
Next morning I went for a long ride
with the Commandant to inspect some
A RIDE TO KALABAC 63
more of the positions. He had to hold an
enormous front with only two regiments,
and, as we were outnumbered by the
Bulgarians by more than four to one,
when the latter could not break through
our lines they simply made an encircling
movement and walked round them, and,
as there were absolutely no reserves,
every available man being already in the
fighting line, troops had to abandon some
other position in order to cut across and
bar their route. Thus we were constantly
being edged back, and were very many
times in great danger of being surrounded*
We were fighting a rear-guard action prac-
tically all the time for the next six weeks —
a mere handful of troops, worn out by
weeks of incessant fighting, hungry, sick,
and with no big guns to back them up.
64 A RIDE TO KALABAC
retreating slowly and in good order before
overwhelming forces of an enemy who was
fresh, well equipped and with heavy
artillery. It was no use throwing men's
lives away by holding on to positions
when no purpose could be gained by it,
though the Colonel felt it keenly that the
finest regiment in the Army should have
to abandon position after position,
although contesting every inch, with-
out having a chance of going on the
offensive. It was heartbreaking work for
all concerned, and the way they accom-
plished it is an everlasting credit to
officers and men alike.
My orderly told me he had heard we were
going that evening, so he packed up every-
thing, camp bed included, and put it in my
wagon. We hung about all the evening
A RIDE TO KALABAC 65
expecting to get the order to go at any
moment, as the horses were always kept
ready saddled in the stable, and you
simply had to " stand by " and wait until
you were told to go, and then be ready to
get straight off. Eventually, however,
the Commandant came back and said we
were not going that night, and we had a
quiet supper about ten o'clock and turned
in, with a warning to be up early in the
morning. As my bed was packed up I
rolled myself up in a blanket on the floor,
and my orderly did likewise at the other
side of the stove and kept the fire up. It
was snowing hard and frightfully cold.
At daybreak we did move, but not very
far, only to the little hahn by the roadside ;
and there we stood about in the snow and
listened to a battle which was apparently
66 A RIDE TO KALABAC
going on quite close ; although we strained
our eyes we could see nothing — there was
such a frightful blizzard. A company of
reinforcements passed us and floundered
off through the deep snow drifts across
the fields in the direction of the firing.
There was no artillery fire (I suppose they
could not haul the guns through the snow),
but the crackle of the rifles got nearer and
nearer, and at last about midday they
were so close that we could hear the wild
" Hourrah, Hourrahs " of the Bulgarians
as they took our trenches, and as the
blizzard had stopped for a bit we could
see them coming streaking across the
snow towards us, oiu* little handful of men
retreating and reforming as they went.
The Bulgarians always give the most
blood-curdling yells when they charge.
A RIDE TO KALABAC 67
The ambulance was already gone, and
there were only the Colonel and his staff,
myself and the doctor left. The horses
were brought out, and the order came to
go, but only about three miles to where
the big ambulance was camped with whom
I had been at first.
There was a river between the hahn
and this ambulance, and the road went
over a bridge. This bridge was heavily
mined and was to be blown up as soon as
our men were over, thus cutting off, or
anyhow considerably delaying, the Bul-
garians, as the river was uow a swollen
icy torrent. We sat round the fire of the
ambulance and dried our feet. Some of
the men were soaking to the knees, having
no boots, but only opankis, leather sandals
fastened on with a strap which winds
68 A RIDE TO KALABAC
round the leg up to the knee. Later on
some wounded were brought in, given a
very hurried dressing, and despatched at
once to the base hospital. The majority
of them seemed to be hit in the right arm
or wrist, but I am afraid perhaps the
worst wounded never reached us. One
poor fellow who was hit in the abdomen
was, I am afraid, done for ; he would
hardly live till he got to the hospital.
We heard no more firing till late in the
afternoon, when all at once it broke out
again quite close, and with big guns as
well this time. We wondered how on
earth they had been able to get them
across the river, but the explanation was
forthcoming when we heard that the
bridge, although it had ten mines in it, had
failed to blow up— the mines would not
A RIDE TO KALABAC 69
explode ; no one knew why. I floun-
dered through the snow up a httle hill
with some of the others to see if we could
see anything, but we could not see much
through the winter twilight except the
flashes from the guns momentarily light-
ing up the snow banks, and hear the noise
of the shells as they whistled overhead.
This had been going on for a
couple of hours now, and the Greek
doctor was getting into a regular funk
because they had had no orders to move,
though it was all right as we had no
wounded in the tent to be carried away,
and no one else was worrying about it ;
but he finally sent a messenger up to the
Commandant, as he seemed to think the
ambulance had been forgotten. A couple
of days afterwards the men told me
70 A RIDE TO KALABAC
with much scorn that that afternoon had
been too much for him, and that he did a
retreat on his own and never came back
to the ambulance again. I was just think-
ing of looking round for something to
eat, as I had had neither breakfast nor
lunch, and had been much too busy
to think about it, when the order
arrived for the ambulance to pack up
and move, and the tents came down
like lightning. The soldiers were all re-
treating across the snow, and I never saw
such a depressing sight. The grey No-
vember twilight, the endless white ex-
panse of snow, lit up ev^ry moment by
the flashes of the guns, and the long
column of men trailing away into the
dusk wailing a sort of dismal dirge— I
don't know what it was they were singing
A RIDE TO KALABAC 71
—something between a song and a sob,
it sounded like the cry of a Banshee. I
have never heard it before or since, but
it was a most heartbreaking sound.
My sais (groom) brought Diana round
to me. I asked him if he had been told
to do so, and he said " No," but that I
" had better go now." He shook his
head dubiously, murmuring, " Safer to go
now," when I told him I was coming later
on with the Commandant and his staff.
War always seems to turn out exactly
the opposite to what you imagine is going
to happen. Such a great proportion of it
consists of "an everlastin' waiting on an
everlastin' road," as someone has already
written. Bairnsfather hits it oft exactly
in his picture of the young officer with
his new sword : how he pictures himself
F2
72 A RIDE TO KALABAC
using it, charging at the head of his com-
pany, and how he really does use it,
toasting bread over the camp fire ! I
had some wild visions in my head — as I
knew the Commandant would wait until
the last moment — of a tremendous gallop
over the snow, hotly pursued by Bul-
garian cavalry. I imagine I must once
have seen something like it on a cine-
matograph. What, however, really did
happen was that, having received per-
mission to stop, I sat for four hours in
company with seven or eight officers who
were waiting for orders, on a hard bench
in a freezing cold shed, which in its
palmier days might have been a cowhouse.
I was ravenously hungry, and sucked a
few Horlick's milk tablets I found in my
pocket, but they did not seem so satis-
A RIDE TO KALABAC 73
fying as the advertisements would lead
one to suppose. However, presently the
jolly little captain, whose tent I described
on Kalabac, came in, followed by his
soldier servant bearing a hot roast chicken
wrapped up in a piece of paper ! Where
in the world he got it I can't think. We
had no knives or forks, but we sat side by
side, and each took hold of a leg and
pulled till something gave. It tasted
delicious ! He shared it roimd with every-
body, and I don't think had much left
for himself. Although he came straight
from the trenches, where he had been
fighting incessantly and had not slept for
three nights himself, he was full of spirits
and livened us all up, and we little thought
that it was the last time we were to see
him. I was terribly sorry to hear a few
74 A RIDE TO KALABAC
days later of the tragic death of my gay
little friend.
The firing had ceased, as it usually does
at night, and at last, about nine o'clock,
the Commandant appeared and the horses
were brought out, and instead of the wild
cinema gallop I had pictured we had one
of the slowest, coldest rides you can
imagine. There was a piercing blizzard
blowing across the snowy waste, blinding
our eyes and filling our ears with snow;
our hands were numbed, and our feet
so cold and wet we could hardly feel
the stirrups. We proceeded in dead
silence, no one feeling disposed to talk,
and slowly threaded our way through
crowds of soldiers tramping along, with
bent heads, as silently as phantoms, the
sound of their feet muffled by the snow.
A RIDE TO KALAEAC
I pitied the poor fellows from the bottom
of my heart — they were so much colder
and wearier even than I was myself, and
I wondered where the " glory " of war
came in. It was exactly like a nightmare,
from which one might presently wake up.
My dreams of home fires and hot muffins
were brought to an abrupt termination by
the Commandant suddenly breaking into
a trot, when I found my knees were " set
fast " with the cold, and I had a very
painful five minutes till they loosened up.
After a long time we turned oft the
road across some snowy fields. I fol-
lowed close behind the Commandant, who
always made a bee line straight ahead
through everything ; and after our horses
had slipped and scrambled through a
hedge, a couple of deep ditches and a
76 A RIDE TO KALABAC
stream we eventually got to the village
of Mogilee, I think it was called. The
soldiers bivouacked in some farm out-
houses, and we were received by some
officers in a big loft. They had a huge
stove going and supper ready for us. We
finished up the long day quite cheerily,
even having a bottle of champagne that
a comitadje brought as a present to the
Commandant. We all slept that night
in the loft on the floor, I being given the
place of honour on a wide bench near the
stove, while the other six or seven selected
whichever particular board on the floor
took their fancy most, and spread their
blankets on it. Turning in was a simple
matter, as you only have to take off your
boots ; and, though the atmosphere got
a bit thick, we all slept like tops.
THE TENT I SLEPT IN FOR TWO MONTHS
?age 24
SERBIAN ARMY TRUDGING ALONG
?age 77
CHAPTER IV
I MEET THE FOURTH COMPANY— A COLD
NIGHT RIDE
We were all up at daybreak next morning
as usual ; no good Serbian sleeps after
the first streak of light. It was still
snowing fearfully hard, making it impos-
sible to go out, though the Commandant
and his Staff Captain rode out somewhere
all the morning. We had sundry cups of
tea and coffee during the morning and a
pretty substantial snack of bread and eggs
and cold pig about ten. I protested that
I was not hungry, and that we should have
lunch when the Commandant came in,
77
78 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
but they reminded me of what had hap-
pened to me yesterday in the matter of
meals, and might possibly happen again
to-morrow, and advised me to eat and
sleep whenever I got a chance. They were
old soldiers and spoke from experience,
and I subsequently found it to be very
good advice.
It was a long day, as we had nothing to
do. In the afternoon the doctor started
to teach me some Serbian verbs, and after-
wards we all played " Fox and Goose,"
and I initiated them into the mysteries of
" drawing a pig with your eyes shut," and
any other games we could think of with
pencil and paper to while away the time.
About dusk we set forth again to a small
village, Orizir, close to Bitol. It was
pitch dark as we splashed across a field
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 79
and a couple of streams to another little
house which we occupied. It consisted
of two tiny rooms, up a sort of ladder,
with a fair-sized balcony in front. The
balcony was quite sheltered with a big pile
of straw at one end, and I elected to
sleep there, though they were fearfully
worried about it, and declared I should
die of cold, in spite of my protestations
that English people always sleep much
better in the open air than in a hot room
with all the windows shut. Foreigners
always look upon English people as more
than half mad on the subject of fresh
air, especially at night. The next day
my orderly, who was in a great state of
mind, and seemed to think that I would
lose caste with his fellow orderlies if I
persisted in sleeping on the balcony, told
80 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
me that he had found another room for
me in a hahn by the roadside, where I
accordingly slept the next night, and sub-
sequently we all moved down there. I
actually got my long-sought-for bath that
day, my resourceful man borrowing a
sort of stable for me for an hour and fixing
it up for me. As all old campaigners
know, a certain kind of live stock, and
plenty of them, is the inevitable accom-
paniment to this sort of life, and is one of
its greatest trials, though you do get more
or less used even to that. I burnt a hole,
in my vest cremating some of them, but
judging by the look of my bathroom,
where the soldiers had been sleeping, I
am not at all siu^e that I did not carry
more away with me than I got rid of.
While I was engaged in this interesting
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 81
occupation my orderly called out that the
English Consul was there and wished to
see me, so I hastily dressed and went out
to interview him. He had come in a car
to take me back to Salonica with him if
I wanted to go, which of course I did not ;
so he just drove me into town to pick up
a large case of cigarettes which I had
previously ordered from Salonica for my-
self and the soldiers and anyone else who
ran short of them, and he also gave me a
case of tins of jam and one of warm
woollen helmets, which were very much
appreciated by the men. He said he
thought I was quite right to stop, and we
parted warm friends.
When I got back I found the Staff
Captain, who was the Commandant's
right hand, just going out for another
82 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
cold ride. He had had fever for the last
two or three days, and looked so fearfully
ill that I begged him not to go, as, however
much he might, and did, boss everybody
when he was well, he might let hirr^self be
looked after a little bit when he was ill.
Rather to my surprise he submitted quite
meekly, and let me dose him with quinine,
and tuck him up in his blankets by the
stove, and as he was shivering violently I
told his orderly to make him some hot
tea and stand outside the door to see that
no one came in to disturb him. As the
tea did not seem to be forthcoming, I
went out presently to see what was up,
and found him with several of his fellow
orderlies sitting in the snow round the
camp fire having a meal of some kind.
He said he had made the tea, but had not
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 83
any sugar; so I asked some of the
others.
" Now, don't you say ' Nema ' to me,"
I said, before he had time to speak, " but
go and find some, because I know per-
fectly well you have got it." It is a
Serbian peculiarity, which I had found
out long ago, that whenever you first ask
for a thing they invariably say " Nema "
(" There isn't any "). I have frequently
been told that in a shop with the thing
lying there under my eyes, because the
man was too lazy to get up and get it.
They thought it a great joke, and of course
produced it, and " Don't say ' Nema ' to
me " became a sort of laughing byword
amongst some of the men afterwards when-
ever I asked for anything. They have a
keen sense of humour, and are always
84 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
ready for a laugh and a joke, and their
gaiety and high spirits bubble up even
under the most adverse circumstances.
The rest of the Staff and I then made a
fire in the other little room, and sat there
and played chess and auction bridge, and
were making a terrific noise over the latter,
when the Commandant came back. If you
really want an amusing occupation, likely
to give rise to any amount of discussion and
argument, try teaching auction bridge to
three men who have never seen it played
before, in a language your knowledge of
which is so slight that you can only ask
for the simplest things in the fewest
possible words. You'll find the result is
a very queer and original game.
The next afternoon, it having at last
stopped snowing, I walked over to visit
00
CO
>
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<
w
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 85
my old friends in the ambulance a couple
of miles up the road, and we sat by the
camp fire and pored over the map of
Albania, whither we should soon be going,
and discussed the war as usual. When I
got back about sunset I found the Com-
mandant had gone to visit a company
who were camped about a mile and a half
up the road, and his Adjutant was waiting
for me, as we thought it would be a good
opportunity to give away some of the
warm woollen helmets while it was so cold.
Accordingly, followed by a couple of men
carrying the wool helmets, some cigarettes
and a few pots of jam, we started for the
camp. It turned out to be the Fourth
Company of the First Battalion, strange
to say, the very company that I after-
wards joined, though I didn't guess that
86 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
at the time. It was a most picturesque
scene with the httle tents all crowded
together, and dozens of big camp fires
blazing in the snow with soldiers sitting
round them ; they all seemed very cheery
in spite of the bitter cold. We had a
great reception, the whole company was
lined up, and under the direction of their
Company Commander I gave every
seventh man a white woollen helmet—
unfortunately there were not enough for
each man to have one — and every man a
couple of cigarettes, and my orderly fol-
lowed with half a dozen large pots of jam
and a spoon, the men opening their mouths
like young starlings waiting to be fed.
This is a national custom in Serbia;
directly you visit a house your hostess
brings in a tray with a pot of jam, glasses
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 87
of water and a dish with spoons on it.
You eat a spoonful of jam, take a drink of
water, and put your spoon down on
another dish provided for that purpose.
It is very amusing to see a stranger the
first time this is presented to him ; he
generally does not know what he is sup-
posed to do, or whether he is to dip the
jam into the water, or vice versa, and how
many spoonfuls it would be polite to eat,
Serbian jam being extraordinarily good.
One Englishman I knew wanted to go on
eating several spoonfuls, and I had gently
but firmly to check him.
I was introduced to all the officers,
and a great many of the men who
were pointed out to me as having
done something very special. One of the
men was wearing an English medal for
G2
88 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
" distinguished conduct in the field." The
men seemed awfully pleased with their
little presents ; they never have anything
in the way of luxury — no jam, sweets or
tobacco served out to them with their
rations, no parcels or letters from home
(at this time), no concerts or amusements
got up for their benefit, none of the things
that our Tommies hardly regard in the
light of luxuries, but necessities. No one
who has not lived with them can imagine
how simply they live, how much they
think of a very little, and what a small
thing it takes to please them. After that
little ceremony was over we sat round the
officers' camp fire and a young sergeant
— a student artist — played the flute very
well indeed, and they sang some of their
national songs. It was all so friendly and
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 89
fascinating that we were very loath in-
deed to tear ourselves away, and I pro-
mised to come back next day and take
their photographs, but next day they
were not there, having been ordered off at
dawn to hold some positions up on the hills.
Among other sundry oddments in my
luggage I had a box of chessmen and a
board, and as several of them could play
we whiled away many weary hours when
we had nothing else to do playing chess.
The Commandant and I were very evenly
matched, and we used to have some
tremendous battles, sometimes long after
everyone else was asleep, and always kept
a careful record of who won. Some of
the others were very keen on it too, and
those who were not playing would stand
round and offer advice. I used sometimes
90 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
to think, as I listened to the sounds of
hurried packing up going on all round
while we sat calmly playing chess, that
the Bulgars would walk in one day and
capture the lot of us, chessboard and all.
About 9 p.m. next night the Comman-
dant gave the order to start, and we walked
the first mile, the horses being led behind,
I suppose to get used to the roads, which
were one slippery sheet of ice. When we
got to Bitol, which was quite close, we
went to the headquarters of the Com-
mandant of the division, and sat there
till about midnight, while he and our
Commandant discussed matters. We met
Dr. Nikotitch there again, and he and
Commandant Wasitch asked me if I really
had made up my mind to go on. They
said the journey through Albania would
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 91
be very terrible, that nothing we had gone
through so far was anything approaching
it, and that they would send me down to
Salonica if I liked. I was not quite sure
whether having a woman with them might
not be more of an anxiety and nuisance to
them than anything else, though they
knew I did not mind roughing it ; and I
asked them, if so, to tell me quite frankly,
and I would go down to Salonica that
night. They were awfully nice, though,
and said that " for them it would be better
if I stopped, because it would encourage
the soldiers, who already all knew me, and
to whose simple minds I represented, so to
speak, the whole of England." The only
thought that buoyed them up at that time,
and still does, was that England would never
forsake them. So that settled the matter.
92 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
as I should have been awfully sorry if I
had had to go back, and I believe the fact
that I went through with them did perhaps
sometimes help to encourage the soldiers,
t We left there soon after midnight, and
rode all night and most of the next day*
The Commandant and his Staff Captain
drove in a wagon, the same one that the
Kid and I had driven in on the first night
of the retreat. They asked me whether
I would rather come in the wagon with
them or ride, as the roads were simply
terrible, but I elected to ride and chance
Diana going on her head, which she did
not do, however, as the Commandant, with
his usual thoughtfulness, had had her
roughed for me a few days before. We
rode very, very slowly, always through
crowds of soldiers, pack-horses and
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 93
donkeys, halting about every hour at
little camp fires along the roadside made
by our front guard, where we sat and
warmed our feet for about a quarter of an
hour till the tired soldiers could catch us
up, there being frequent halts for them to
^rest for a few minutes. I rode alongside
the Adjutant and another officer, and was
very glad that my orderly had filled my
thermos flask with hot tea, with a good
dash of cognac in it, which the three of
us consumed while riding along. The
roads were really fearful, one solid sheet
of ice, and the Adjutant's horse came
down so often that eventually he had
to walk and lead it. Occasionally we
all used to get down and walk for a
bit to warm our feet, which became
like blocks of ice, but the going was
94 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
so hard that we were glad to mount
again. I say " mount," but in reahty^
what between wearing a heavy fur coat
and getting colder and stiffer and wearier,
it was more a sort of crawl up Diana's
side that I did ; fortunately she was a
patient animal, and used to stand still.
It soothed my feelings to see that I was
not the only one, several of the others
having nearly as much difficulty in
mounting. They were all so friendly, and
I had more than one " Good luck to you "
shouted after me. It was not really such
a hard ride as we had expected, though, as
stopping at the little camp fires and chatting
with the men round them made a nice break.
About daybreak we arrived at a hahn,
where we found the ambulance again,
and the Commandant and the Captain
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 95
got their horses there, and we all walked,
and later on rode, up and up a winding
road, up a mountain. It was bitterly cold,
and every few yards we passed horrible
looking corpses of bullocks, donkeys and
ponies, with the hides and some of the
flesh stripped from them ; sometimes
there were packs, ammunition and rifles
thrown away by the roadside, but very,
very few of the latter ; a soldier is very
far gone indeed before he will part with
that. Of course everywhere swarmed
with spies, and we stopped a man and a
boy in civilian clothes carrying baskets ;
they protested that they were going down
to do somxC marketing or something of
that sort, but whatever it was they
wanted to do they were told they could
not do it, and gently but firmly turned back.
96 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
At the very top we stopped at the ruins
of a filthy little hut, where a halt was
called and the field telephone rigged up.
We built a fire outside— it was too dirty
to go inside — under the wall, and had
some coffee, and tried, very unsuccess-
fully, to get out of the howling, bitter
wind. The soldiers sat about and rested,
and we stayed there until late in the after-
noon. We were to spend the night at Resan,
some way down the other side, and about
3 o'clock the doctor said he was going
down there, and I might as well come
down with him and look for a room. Wily
young man, he was petrified with cold
himself and didn't like to say so, so had
previously told the Staff Captain that /
was cold and wanted to go into the town,
and that, as I could not go by myself,
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 97
hadn't he better escort me? He let this
out afterwards, and I was very indignant
with him, but he was quite unabashed.
He used to love teasing me, calling me
" Napoleon " because I rode a white
horse, and we were constantly sparring.
My orderly, after a long search, found me
quite a decent little room in a house close
to the Caserne, w^here the staff were to be
quartered. The family consisted of two
old ladies and a girl, who all fell on my
neck and hugged me, rather to my em-
barrassment. One of the old ladies
explained volubly that she had once had
something — I never could quite make out
whether it was a husband or a cat — and
had lost it, and I was now to take its place
in the family circle.
We all sat round the stove in my little
98 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
room, which seemed quite a luxm-ious
palace to me now, and I made them real
EngHsh tea with my little tea-basket,
and the poor old things seemed quite
enchanted, as they had neither tea nor
sugar in the house, and they fussed over
me, and could not do enough for me.
The next morning I stayed in bed till
nearly eight, and, after dressing leisiu'ely,
went up to see the Commandant and
staff, who said they had begun to think
they had lost me. About five o'clock my
orderly came in in a great state of excite-
ment and wrath, declaring that he did not
know what to do with my things as the
wagon had been taken for something else,
and that the Commandant and staff were
all gone. He was an excitable person,
and used to get these panics occasionally,
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 99
and, as I knew perfectly well that whatever
happened they would not leave me behind,
I told him not to be such an ass, but to go
and get my horse and I would go and find
out for myself, as I could not get any
sense out of him. I happened to meet
the Commandant in the street, and, as I
fully expected, we had supper quietly,
and did not stir till 9 p.m. We nearly
always did ride at night. We left very
quietly, and walked the first bit of the
way through the mud, and then rode up
a beautiful serpentine road, which had
originally been made by the Turks, through
what looked as if it might be beautiful
country if you could only see it. All the
way along there were soldiers and camp
fires, which looked so pretty twinkling all
over the hills through the fir trees, and we
100 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
made frequent halts while the Com-
mandant gave his orders.
I thought we were going to ride all
night, and it was a pleasant surprise when
we turned off the road, and put our horses
at a steep muddy bit of moimd at the top
of which was an old block-house, one of
the many built by the Tiu-ks and dotted
all over that part of the country. The
telephone was rigged up there, and it was
full of officers and soldiers ; the ground
all round was a perfect sea of mud, and
there were soldiers everywhere. I had
not the faintest idea whether we were
going to stop there half an hour or for the
rest of the night, and I don't suppose
anybody else had either, except, perhaps,
the Commandant. I sat by the stove for
some time, and finally lay down on the
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 101
floor on some straw that looked not quite
so dirty as the rest, though that is not
saying much, but when I woke up some
hours later I got the impression that I had
strayed into a new version of the Black
Hole of Calcutta. The whole floor was
absolutely covered so thickly with sleeping
men that you could not put your feet
down without treading on them. I
counted up to twenty-nine and then gave
it up because I saw several more come in
afterwards, though where they managed
to wedge themselves in I do not know.
The Commandant had left the telephone
and was sleeping peacefully among the
others ; the only person awake was a
very big, good-looking gendarme, w^ho was
keeping the stove stoked up, although it
w^as already suffocatingly hot. The Ser-
102 A COLD NIGHT RIDE
bians laugh at me because I declare that
they always pick their gendarmes for
their good looks ; they are certainly a
magnificent set of men. This one inquired
if I wanted anything, as soon as he saw
that I was awake, and I asked him if he
would fetch me my thermos flask full of
tea, which he would find in Diana's
saddle-bag. He had never seen a thermos
flask before, and when he brought it back
and I shared the tea with him he was
perfectly thunderstruck to find it still hot.
He couldn't make it out at all, and seemed
to think that in some extraordinary way
Diana must have had something to do
with it, and I shouldn't be surprised if
next day he put a bottle of tea in his own
saddle-bag to see if his horse would be
equally clever.
A COLD NIGHT RIDE 103
About 5 a.m., while it was still dark, I
woke up again so boiling hot that I could
not stand it any longer, and crawled out
cautiously over the sleeping men, treading
on a good many, I am afraid, though they
did not seem to object, and took a walk
round ; but, as it was raining and the mud
appalling, I did not stay outside long.
There was one camp fire still going, and
what I took to be a large bundle covered
over with a sack beside it. Here's luck,
I thought, something to sit on beside the
fire, and down I plumped, but got up
again quickly when it gave a protesting
grunt and a heave, and I found I had sat
down on a man. After that I sat on a
tin can in the cold passage for some time
and waited for daybreak.
H2
CHAPTER V
WE SAY GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA AND TAKE TO
THE ALBANIAN MOUNTAINS
The next morning we rode on and camped
at another block-house. The field tele-
phone was going all the time here, and
evidently the news was anything but
satisfactory. I did so heartily wish that
I knew more Serbian and could under-
stand more of what was going on. I was
so keenly interested in what was happen-
ing and where the various companies
were and how they were getting on, and
it was maddening when breathless de-
spatch riders used to come in from the
104
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 105
trenches, and I could only gather a little
bit of what they were saying, and generally
miss the vital point. The Commandant
and his Staff Captain used to pore over
maps at the table, and, although they
would not have minded my knowing any-
thing, of course I could not bother them
with questions. Sometimes if Comman-
dant Militch was not busy he used to show
me the various positions on the map, and
tell me where he was moving the men to.
It was such a frightfully anxious time for
him, he had to hold the threads of every-
thing in his hands; everything depended
on him, the lives and safety of all the men,
and despatch riders and telephone calls
gave him very little rest.
On this particular occasion we made an
unusually sudden start, and he explained
106 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
to me afterwards, as we were riding along,
that the Bulgarians had made another of
their encircling movements, and got round
our position, and very nearly cut the road
in front of us, and there was considerable
probability at one moment that we might
have to take to the mountains on foot, to
escape being taken prisoners. However,
he was able to send some troops round,
and they succeeded in getting down in
time to cut them off. Being taken
prisoner by the wild Bulgarians would
have been no joke.
We halted in the afternoon in a field
where a company was resting, some of the
Third Call. There are three calls. First,
Second and Third — the young men, middle-
aged and the old fellows, who as a general
rule are only used for light work, guarding
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 107
bridges, railways, etc., but now had to
march and do the same as the young men,
and it came very hard on them.
The Serbians hve hard and seem to
age much quicker than our men do, as
they call a man of forty or forty-five an
old man, and they look it, too. The
peasants usually marry very young, about
twenty ; and as we sat and chatted round
the fires several of this Third Call told me
their ages and how many sons they had
serving in the Army. We camped that
night in a house in the village, the usual
room up a flight of wooden steps. These
houses never seem to have any ground
floor. I suppose in these disturbed parts
the inhabitants find it safer to live at the
top of a ladder.
The next day the snow had all cleared
108 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
away, and, strange to say, it was like a
lovely spring morning. While I was
drinking a cup of coffee out on the veran-
dah a young soldier came up and wanted
to see the Commandant. He looked fear-
fully thin and ill, and told me that he and
ten others had had nothing to eat for
eleven days. I was horror-struck, and
asked the Staff Captain if such a thing
could be possible, but what he literally
meant was that they had been stationed
somewhere where they had received no
regular rations, and had had to live by
their wits or on what the people in the
village would give them. Be that as it
may, there was no mistaking the fact
that he looked very hungry, and I gave
him a large piece of bread and cheese
which I had in reserve and some cigarettes.
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 109
He put the piece of bread and cheese in
his pocket, and when I asked him why he
did not eat it then and there said he was
going to take it back and share it with
the others ! To see real unselfishness one
must live through bad times like these
with men, when everyone shares whatever
he has.
We rode on into a filthy, muddy little
village, where we spent the afternoon.
I went for a walk up the hill, through a
company of soldiers who were resting on
the grass, belonging to some other regiment
whom I did not know, and coming back
I was stopped and closely questioned by
an ofiicer. He did not know who I was,
and was evidently considerably puzzled.
He wanted to know where I had been
and why, and seemed to think that I
110 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
might have been paying a visit to the
Bulgarians, who were close on our heels
as usual. He looked rather incredulous
when I said that I had only been for a
walk, and I thought he was going to
arrest me on the spot pending further
investigations, until I pointed to the brass
letter " 2 " on my shoulders, and said I
was with the Second Regiment, and that
the Commandant was down in the village.
Then he let me pass. The Commandant
had taken the regimental numbers off his
own epaulettes when I first joined and
fastened them on the shoulders of his new
recruit, and I was very proud of them.
The Commandant was very much amused
when I told him about it, and told me not
to go and get shot in mistake for a spy.
In the evening we rode on by Ockrida
A COLD HALTING PLACE
Page 103
THE BLOCK HOUSE WHERE WE ALL SLEPT
Page 1 1 o
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 111
Lake, on and on along the most awful
roads, with mud up to our horses' knees,
till we finally came to a building and
camped in the loft.
Next morning I rode out with the
Commandant to inspect the positions.
There was a battle going on a little way
away in the hills, and we could hear
the guns plainly and see the shrapnel
bursting. There was a lovely view of
the lake, and on the other side you looked
away towards the black Albanian hills,
and we thought as we looked towards
them that this was the very last scrap of
Serbia, and that we should soon be driven
out of it. Coming back we passed a
company by the roadside, and the Com-
mandant stopped and talked to them,
and anyone could see how popular he
112 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
was, and how pleased they always were
to see him. He made them a long speech,
cheering them up and teUing them to
stand fast now and not despair, as some
day we would all march back into Serbia
together.
We rode to Struga, on the Ockrida
Lake, that night, and went up to the
headquarters of the Commandant of the
division, where we found him and his
whole staff in bed. The room seemed
absolutely ftdl up with camp beds and
sleeping men, but they got up with great
cheerfulness, put on their boots and
brushed their moustaches and entertained
us with tea and coffee till about 1 a.m.,
when we repaired to an empty hotel,
where there was plenty of room for all,
for a few hours' sleep.
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 113
We were routed out long before dawn,
and after a cup of Turkish coffee in the
kitchen all turned out into the main street
of the village of Struga. In the bitterly
cold grey dawn we stood around in black,
churned-up mud, shivering, himgry, and
miserable. The discouraged soldiers
trailed along the road, in the half-light
of a winter morning, and altogether we
looked the most hopelessly forlorn Army
imaginable, setting our faces towards the
dark, hard-looking range of snow-capped
mountains which separate their beloved
Serbia from Albania. It was the last
town in Serbia, and we were being driven
out of it into exile. It made me feel sad
enough, and what must it have been to
them, for they are so passionately attached
to their own country that they never
114 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
want to leave it, and the Serbian peasant
feels lost and homesick ten miles from his
own native village.
A great deal has been written about
the physical sufferings of the soldiers at
this time ; hunger and pain they can
stand, but this home sickness and despair,
the feeling that they were friendless, an
Army in exile, not knowing what had
become of all their loved ones in Serbia,
this was what really broke their hearts
and took the spirit out of them far more
than their other sufferings. They looked
upon me almost as one of themselves,
and officers and men alike used to tell
me about their homes until I felt almost
as if it was my own country that had been
invaded, and that we were being driven
out of. "I am leaving my youth behind
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 115
me in Albania," said one young officer to
me as we sat looking away into the
stormy Albanian sunset one evening.
How many of us before we won through
to the coast were to leave not only our
youth but our health and some of us our
lives on those Albanian mountains !
Very glad I was that morning to see the
sun rise and things brighten and warm
up a little. We rode to a Turkish village
up on a hill overlooking Struga and the
lake, and from there we watched the
bridge burn which connected the Turkish
quarter of the town with the part held by
our soldiers, thus delaying the Bulgarian
pursuit, but not for long. We stayed
there tw^o or three days with fighting
going on all around. The Bulgarians kept
up a heavy bombardment with their big
116 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
guns over the Struga road, responded to
by our little antiquated cannon. We
looked right down on it, and watched the
shrapnel bursting all day and the enemy
gradually coming closer. Some of our
artillery was concealed in a little wood just
below the village, and presently the enemy
got the range of this beautifully, and the
shells were falling fast among the trees.
The doctor had been down there, and he
brought me back a piece of shell which had
fallen right into the middle of the men's
kitchen and upset all their soup, scattering
them in all directions, but, w^onderful to
say, not hurting anybody, and he had
promised to take me with him next time.
I was sitting on the wall with the Staff
Captain watching it and wanted very
much to go down, but he said I had better
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 117
not. " Do you mean only I ' had better
not,' or that I ' am not to ' ? " I enquired
meekly, having a wholesome respect for
military discipline by now. " No," he
said positively, " I mean you are not to."
So there was nothing more to do but to
salute and say " Rasumem " ("I under-
stand "), the Serbian reply to an order.
I thought it rather hard, however, to be
chipped afterwards by the officer in com-
mand down there for not coming down to
help them and I could not persuade him
that I had done my best.
The Turkish inhabitants of the village
were very friendly, and the old man who
owned our house used to bring us large
presents of walnuts. They did not seem
to like the Bulgarians at all, and explained
to us by signs that the Bulgarians were
118 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
bad people and very cruel and would cut
their throats if they came into the village.
The villagers used to sit about all day
watching the shrapnel. They seemed very
pleased to see us, and several of the children
used to bring me presents of nuts and
flowers. They used to look at me with
great curiosity, and could not quite make
out who or what I was. I found a couple
of miserable looking Austrian prisoners
who were wandering round the village, who
were too ill to go away with the others and
had been left behind.
We left there a few days afterwards at
three o'clock in the morning and rode down
to a valley where the Fourteenth Regi-
ment were camped, and spent the rest of
the night sitting round their camp fire.
We looked so funny in the early morning
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 119
light all squatting round the fire, the
Commandant included, toasting bits of
cheese on the ends of pointed sticks ; it
tasted extremely good washed down by
some of the Commandant's " Widow's
Cruse " of liqueur. I wanted to take a
photograph of us, but the light wasn't
good enough. Afterwards I curled up by
the fire with the soldiers and went to sleep,
and the sun was shining brightly when I
woke to find the whole regiment sitting up
with their shirts off busily hunting the
" first hundred thousand," and I wished I
could do the same myself. " Shirts off "
always seemed by unanimous consent to
be the order of the day directly there was
a halt for any length of time, and I should
think there must have been very large
catches " sometimes.
12
120 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
We crossed the frontier through Albania
that afternoon, and went along a winding
road up a hill till right at the top you
looked down on beautiful Lake Ockrida
and Serbia on one hand and on the other
barren Albania. Here we halted for a few
minutes, and sort of said good-bye to
Serbia, and then rode on in silence into
the Albanian valley, where we camped at
a sentry's little hut on a hillock.
The next day the Commandant took
me with him for his usual ride up into the
positions. The hills were very rough and
steep, but our plucky horses managed it
all right. We stopped at one Albanian
village, on the way which was invested by
some of our troops. These Albanian vil-
lages were a perfect picture of squalor and
filth. I don't know what the people
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 121
subsist on, but they seem to live like ani-
mals. I had always pictured the Albanian
peasants as a very fine picturesque race of
men wearing spotless native costume, and
slung about with fascinating looking
daggers and curious weapons of all kinds,
but the great majority of those I saw,
more especially in the small towns, were
a very degenerate looking race indeed.
We had intended going up to some posi-
tions which the Fourteenth Regiment were
holding, and where a battle was then in
progress, but before we got up there we
got word that they had had to retreat,
and saw them coming back down the
mountain side; so we had to stop where
the field telephone was rigged up, and the
Commandant was very busy for a long
time giving orders, etc. He was away
122 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
for some time, and I lay down and went
to sleep on the grass. With their usual
charming manners a couple of soldiers
came up, telling me they had a fire over
there, and one of them fetched his blanket
and spread it by the fire for me to lie on,
while the other one rolled up his overcoat
for a pillow. The Serbian peasant's
manners are not an acquired thing, de-
pending upon whether they have been
well or badly brought up, but seem to be
natural and part of themselves, and as
such are always to be depended upon.
People who do not know anything about
them have sometimes asked me if I was
not afraid to go about among what they
imagine to be a race of wild savages, but
quite the opposite is the case. I cannot
imagine anything more unlikely than to
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 123
be insulted by a Serbian soldier. I should
feel safer walking through any town or
village in Serbia at any hour of the night
than I should in most English or Conti-
nental towns.
Coming back in the dark, Diana fell on
to her head in a ditch, and I rolled off out
of the way, as I did not want her to lie
down on top of me, but I got unmerci-
fully chipped for " falling off." I was
tired, and had besides a splitting head-
ache ; so I went and lay down in my tent
when we got in. My orderly came and
tucked me up, made me some tea, and
told the men near not to make a noise,
and altogether made up for any short-
comings he might have by being exceed-
ingly sympathetic. I had not intended
going in to supper, but he was so per-
124 GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA
suasive about it, telling me there was, as
he expressed it, such a " fine supper," and
was so anxious for me to have some, that
I finally went in. About 9.30 p.m. we
packed up again and rode for a couple of
hours to another little house, where we
found some officers, who turned out of
their beds— which they invited us to sit
on while they entertained us with tea —
after which the Commandant, Captain,
Adjutant and myself turned in thank-
fully, not for very long, as we had to start
at 3 a.m. the next morning.
We rode till daylight, and then camped
on a hill near the ambulance. There was
no house here, so the staff borrowed one
of the ambulance tents, and I pitched my
little one alongside of it. The Second
Regiment were camped on the same hill-
GOOD-BYE TO SERBIA 125 \
side, and the next morning the Commander \
of the First Battalion, Captain Stoyadi- \
novitch, came in to see the Colonel before
going with his battalion to take up the
positions. I asked if I might go with
him, and he said I might ; so I rode off ^
with him at the head of the battalion, ^
little thinking how long it would be ]
before I saw the Commandant and his
staff again, and that was how I came ,j
afterwards to be attached properly to a ;
company, and became an ordinary soldier.
CHAPTER VI
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
We rode all that morning, and as the J
Commander of the battalion, Captain \
Stoyadinoviteh, did not speak anything
but Serbian, nor did any other of the ]
officers or men, it looked as if I should I
soon pick it up. The staff had also 1
shifted their quarters at the same time,
and while we were riding up a very steep
hill where Captain S had to go for
orders Diana's saddle slipped round, and i
by the time some of the soldiers had fixed j
it again for me I found he had got his '
126
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 127
orders and disappeared. I asked some
of the soldiers which way he had gone,
and they pointed across some fields ; so
I went after him as fast as Diana could
gallop. I met three officers that I knew,
also running in the same direction, and
all the men seemed to be going the same
way too. The officers hesitated about
letting me come, and said, " Certainly not
on Diana," who was white and would
make an easy mark for the enemy ; so I
jumped off and threw my reins to a
soldier.
" Well, can you run fast ? " they said.
" What, away from the Bulgars ! " I ex-
claimed in surprise.
" No, towards them."
" Yes, of course I can."
" Well, come on then," and off we went
128 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
for a regular steeplechase, down one side
of a steep hill, splashing and scrambling
through a torrent at the bottom of it and
up another one equally steep, a sturdy lieu-
tenant leading us over all obstacles, at a
pace which left even all of them gasping,
and I was thankful that I was wearing
riding breeches and not skirts, which
would have certainly been a handicap
through the bushes. I wondered how fast
we could go if occasion should arise that
we ever had to run away from the Bul-
garians, if we w^ent at that pace towards
them. Though no one had breath to tell
me where we were going, it was plain
enough, as we could hear the firing more
clearly every moment. We finally came
to anchor in a ruined Albanian hut in the
middle of a bare plateau on the top of a
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 129
hill, where we found the Commander of the
battalion there before us, he having ridden
another way. The Fourth Company,
whom we had already met once that
morning, were holding some natural
trenches a short way farther on, and we
were not allowed to go any farther. The
Bulgarians seemed to have got their artil-
lery fairly close, and the shrapnel was
bursting pretty thickly all round. We
sat under the shelter of the wall and
watched it, though, as it was the only
building standing up all by itself, it seemed
to make a pretty good mark, supposing
they discovered we were there, which
they did very shortly. An ancient old
crone, an Albanian woman, barefooted
and in rags, was wandering about among
the ruins, and she looked such a poor old
130 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
thing that I gave her a few coppers.
She called down what I took at the time
to be blessings on my head, but which
afterwards I had reason to suppose were
curses. The shells were beginning to fall
pretty thickly in our neighboiu-hood, and
our Battalion Commander finally said it
was time to move on. He proved to be
right, as three minutes after we left it the
wall under which we were sitting was
blow^n to atoms by a shell. My old crone
had disappeared in the meantime to a
couple of wooden houses on the edge of
the wood. We had to cross a piece of
open ground, which we did in single file,
to reach this wood, and before we got to
it we got a whole fusillade of bullets
whistling round our ears from the friends
and relations of the old lady upon whom
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 131
I had expended my misplaced sympathy
and coppers. These were the sort of
tricks the Albanians were constantly play-
ing on us from the windows of houses,
whenever they got a chance.
We got down through the w^ood to
where we left our horses, waited for the
Fourth Company to join us, which they
presently did, and then rode on, halting
for a time, not far from where some
of our artillery were shelling the enemy
down below in the valley. The officer in
charge showed me how to fire off one of
the guns when he gave the word, and let me
take the place of the man who had been
doing it as long as we stayed there.
It was dark when we got to our camping
ground that night, close to where the
Colonel and his staff were settled, so I sent
132 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
for my blankets and tent, which I had
left with them, and camped with the
battalion. After a light supper of bowls
of soup we sat in a circle round the camp
fire till late, smoking and chatting. The
w^hole battalion was camped there, in-
cluding the Fourth Company, with whom
I had previously spent an evening at their
camp in the snow, and I thought it very
jolly being with them again. It did not
seem quite so jolly, however, the next
morning, when we were aroused at 3 a.m.
in pitch dark and pouring rain, everything
extremely cold and horribly wet, to climb
into soaking saddles, without any break-
fast, and ride off goodness knows where to
take up some new position.
It was so thick that we could literally
not see our horses' ears ; I kept as close as
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 133
I could behind Captain S , and he
called out every now and again to know
if I was still there. We jostled our way
through crowds of soldiers, all going in the
same direction up a steep path turned
into a mountain torrent from the rain,
with a precipitous rock on the near side,
which I was told to keep close to, as there
was a precipice on the other. A figure
wrapped up in a waterproof cloak loomed
up beside me in the darkness and proved
to be the Commander of the Fourth
Company. He presented me with firstly
a pull from his flask of cognac, which was
very grateful and comforting, and secondly
a pair of warm woollen gloves, which he
had in reserve, as my hands were wet and
frozen. This young man had a most
useful faculty of having a " reserve " of
134 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
everything one could possibly want, which
he always produced just at the right mo-
ment, when one did want it. He had not
done four years' incessant campaigning
without learning everything there was to
know about it, and prided himself upon
always having a " reserve," from a tin of
sardines or a piece of chocolate when you
were hungry and had nothing to eat, to a
spare bridle when someone's broke, as
mine did one day, although he seemed to
carry no more luggage than anyone else.
We rode like this till after daylight, and
then sat on the wet grass under some trees
and had a plate of beans ; they tasted
very good then, but I've eaten them so
often since that now I simply can't look
a bean in the face. They asked me if I
was going to tackle the mountain on foot
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 135
with them, or if I would rather stay there
with the transport. I went with them, of
course. Mount Chukus is 1,790 metres
high from where we were then, and it
certainly was a stiff climb. We left our
horses there — I had been riding a rough
mountain pony of Captain S 's — and
the whole battalion started up on foot.
There was no path most of the way, and
in places it was so steep that we had to
scramble along and pull ourselves up by
the bushes, over the rocks and boulders,
and in spite of the cold and wet we were
all dripping with perspiration. We of
necessity went very slowly, making fre-
quent halts to recover our breath and let
the end men catch up, as we did not want
to lose any stragglers. It must be re-
membered that not one of these men but
K2
136 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
had at least one old wound received either
in this or some previous war, and a great
number had five or six, and this climb
was calculated to catch anybody in their
weak spot.
We arrived at the top about 4 p.m.,
steady travelling since 3 a.m. that morning,
most of which had been uphill and hard-
going. One officer with an old wound
through his chest, and another bullet still
in his side, just dropped on his face when
we got to the top, though he had not
uttered a word of complaint before.
At the very tip-top we camped amongst
some pine trees and put up our tents ; it
was still raining hard and continued to
do so all that night, and everything was
soaking — there didn't seem to be a dry
spot anywhere. The little bivouac tents
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 137
are made in four pieces, and each man
carries one piece, which he wraps round
him hke a waterproof when he has to
march in the rain ; and, if it is not con-
venient to put up tents, rolls himself up
in it at night. We made fires, though we
were nearly blinded by the smoke from
the wet wood ; someone produced some
bread and cheese and shared it round, and
then we all turned in. It was so cold and
wet that I crawled out again about 2 a.m.,
and finished the night by the fire, as did
three or four more uneasy souls who were
too cold to sleep. My feet were soaking,
so I stuck them near the fire and then
went to sleep, pulling my coat over my
head to keep off the rain, and it was not
until some time afterwards that I dis-
covered that I had burnt the soles nearly
138 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
off my boots. I felt hearty sympathy for
a soldier I heard one day in Durazzo
being reprimanded by an officer for having
half his overcoat bm^-nt away — " Do you
think you were the only one who was cold ?
Why didn't that man and that man burn
their clothes? they were just as cold," and
I thought guiltily of my own burnt boots.
Later on the next day the sun put in an
appearance, as did also the Bulgarians.
The other side of the mountain was very
steep, and our position dominated a flat
wooded sort of plateau below, where the
enemy were. One of our sentries, who was
posted behind a rock, reported the first
sight of them, and I went up to see where
they w^ere, with two of the officers. I
could not see them plainly at first, but
they could evidently see our three heads
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 139
very plainly. The companies were
quickly posted in their various positions,
and I made my way over to the Fourth,
which was in the first line ; we did not
need any trenches, as there were heaps of
rocks for cover, and we laid behind them
firing by voUey. I had only a revolver
and no rifle of my own at that time, but
one of my comrades was quite satisfied to
lend me his and curl himself up and smoke.
We all talked in whispers, as if we were
stalking rabbits, though I could not see
that it mattered much if the Bulgarians
did hear us, as they knew exactly where
we were, as the bullets that came singing
round one's head directly one stood up
proved, but they did not seem awfully
good shots. It is a funny thing about
rifle fire, that a person's instinct always
140 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKLS
seems to be to hunch up his shoulders or
turn up his coat collar when he is walking
about, as if it were rain, though the bullet
you hear whistle past your ears is not the
one that is going to hit you. I have seen
heaps of men do this who have been
through dozens of battles and are not
afraid of any mortal thing.
We lay there and fired at them all
that day, and I took a lot of photographs
which I wanted very much to turn out
well; but, alas! duringthe journey through
Albania the films, together with nearly
all the others that I took, got wet and
spoilt. The firing died down at dark, and
we left the firing line and made innumer-
able camp fires and sat round them.
Lieut. Jovitch, the Commander, took me
into his company, and I was enrolled on
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 141
its books, and he seemed to think I might
be made a corporal pretty soon if I
behaved myself. We were 221 in the
Fourth, and were the largest, and, we
flattered om-selves, the smartest, company
of the smartest regiment, the first to be
ready in marching order in the mornings,
and the quickest to have our tents properly
pitched and our camp fires going at night.
Our Company Commander was a hustler,
very proud of his men, and they were
devoted to him and would do anything for
him, and well they might. He was a
martinet for discipline, but the comfort
of his men was always his first considera-
tion ; they came to him for everything,
and he would have given anyone the coat
off his back if they had wanted it. A
good commander makes a good company,
142 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
and he could make a dead man get up and
follow him.
That evening was very different to the
previous one. Lieut. Jovitch had a roaring
fire of pine logs built in a little hollow,
just below what had been our firing line,
and he and I and the other two officers
of the company sat round it and had our
supper of bread and beans, and after
that we spread our blankets on spruce
boughs roimd the fire and roUed up in
them. It was a most glorious moonlight
night, with the ground covered with white
hoar frost, and it looked perfectly lovely
with all the camp fires twinkling every few
yards over the hillside among the pine
trees. I lay on my back looking up at the
stars, and, when one of them asked me
what I was thinking about, I told him
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 143
that when I was old and decrepit and
done for, and had to stay in a house and
not go about any more, I should remember
my first night with the Fourth Company
on the top of Mount Chukus.
The next morning our blankets were all
covered with frost and the air was nippy,
but got warmer as the sun got up, and
one soon gets used to the cold when one
is always out of doors.
We took up our positions again behind
the same line of rocks soon after sunrise.
In the afternoon the firing got very hot,
and the Bulgars got a sort of cross fire on,
so that the bullets were also spitting
across the plateau where we had our fire
last night, and they seemed to be getting
up nearer round another ridge. Our
cannon were posted somewhere below on
144 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
our left commanding the road, and we
could watch how things were going on
between them and the Bulgarian artillery
by the puffs of white smoke. We had a
few casualties, but not so very many.
We stayed there all day till dark, and it
got very cold towards simset, kneeling or
lying on our tummies ; sometimes we
just sniped as we liked, and sometimes
fired by volley as the platoon sergeant
gave the order, "Ne shanni palli" ("Take
aim, fire "). I had luckily always been
used to a rifle, so could do it with the
others all right.
One drawback to Chukus was that there
was very little to eat and no water, or
at least hardly any, it having to be
fetched in water-bottles from a long dis-
tance, or melted down from the snow
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 145
which still hung about there in deep drifts.
We used to fill billy-cans with snow and
melt it over the fire. The men had long
ago finished their ration of bread which
they carried in their knapsacks and only
had corn cobs, which they roasted over
the camp fires ; we had also almost rim
out of cigarettes and tobacco.
About 9 p.m. the order came to retire ;
coming up the mountain was bad enough,
but going down was worse. It was lucky
there was a moon. We went down a
different side along a path covered with
thick slippery mud and very steep, and,
as I had no nails in my boots and not
much soles, I found it hard to keep my
feet. Half-way down we met another
battalion, and I was delighted to meet
my old friend whose " Slava day " we
146 FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS
had celebrated on the top of Mount
Kalabac, and who wanted to know what
in the world I was doing here. We found
the horses at the bottom, and then the
men marched, and I and those of the
officers who had horses rode all night
through a long defile in the mountains.
It was a very narrow track, wath a moim-
tain up one side and a precipice on the
other which effectually prevented one from
giving way to the temptation to go to
sleep while riding.
We picked up the rest of the regiment
soon after daybreak and halted there.
I already knew nearly all the officers, and
they all wanted to know^ what I thought
of Chukus. We sat round the fires for
some time laughing and joking and then
all went on to within a few miles of
FIGHTING ON MOUNT CHUKUS 147
Elbasan. I thought we were going to
camp there, but we still had another five
or six miles' march to the outskirts of
Elbasan. Since I had joined this com-
pany we had had a day's fighting, then a
twelve-hour march, starting at 3 a.m.
with a cUmb to the top of Chukus thrown
in, 36 hours' pelting rain, two days' con-
tinuous fighting, nothing but a few cobs
to eat, and now had been marching since
9 o'clock the night before, yet as we
turned at 5 o'clock in the afternoon into
the swampy field where we were to camp
they had enough spirit left to respond to
their company Commander's appeal, "Now
then, men, left, right, left, right ; pull your-
selves together and remember you are
soldiers," and this was only a sample of
what they had been doing for weeks past.
CHAPTER VII
ELBASAN — WE PUSH ON TOWARDS THE
COAST
Next day we had a whole blessed day's
rest, and the men lay about and rested,
and everybody washed their shirts and
generally polished themselves up to the
best of their ability. Our camp was in a
bare and very muddy field about two
miles outside Elbasan. In the afternoon
Lieut. Jovitch got leave and took me
with him to Elbasan to see the sights and
show me what an Albanian town is like.
It was a filthy little town ; the streets
paved with big cobble stones and running
148
AN ENGLISH WOMAN-SERGEANT IN SERBIA
THE AUTHOR IN KHAKI
Page 148
i
ELBASAN 149
rivers of mud. The inhabitants were as
hostile as they dared to be, and used to
refuse to sell us anything. They put the
price of bread up to Frs. 16 a loaf, and
everything else in proportion, and would
not sell us any hay for our horses, although
they had plenty. Although the men were
not allowed into the town then for fear of
trouble, they would never forget it, and
promised themselves to get some of their
own back whenever they came back that
way again. Many of the inhabitants
were wearing Austrian overcoats which
they had got in exchange for a small piece
of bread from the starving Austrian
prisoners who passed through there. Some
of our men had been given new boots, and,
while refusing to sell us anything, the
Albanians would try to tempt them by
150 ELBASAN
offering a small loaf in exchange for them,
and naturally, under the circumstances,
they sometimes succeeded.
There was absolutely nothing to see in
the town, so we sat for a time in the only
Kafana, or hotel, in the place — a dark,
dirty little den, with some of the officers
whom we met, and drank coffee, and later
in the afternoon galloped back as hard as
we could to camp through the drenching
rain. We found our low-lying field afloat,
and the soldiers had moved to a bit of
slightly rising ground where it was not
quite so bad. It was raining so hard and
everything was so wet that on discovering
a sort of loft or small room up a ladder
fourteen officers and myself piled in there.
Here three of us who had camp beds put
them up, and the rest slept on the floor.
ELBASAN 151
Of course, as a rule camp beds were no
use to us, as you cannot get a camp bed
into a bivouac tent. We thought we
were going to stay there all night, and
would have plenty of time to sleep, and
sat about and talked, and some of them
played cards all night ; so we got a nasty
jar when at daylight the order came that
we were all to move to another camp.
We didn't want any trouble with the
natives, but the officers had the men well
in hand, and they marched steadily
through the town. I rode at the head of
our company, while the company Com-
mander dropped back alongside and kept
his eye on the men ; and we all went
through without trouble, marching well.
We camped in an olive grove beside the
river, and most of us went to sleep. It
L2
152 ELBASAN
still poured all that day and all night and
all the next night and all the next day.
I rode into Elbasan again, and paid a
visit to Commandant Militch and his staff,
who had taken up quarters in the town.
They had arrived that morning, and the
rains had been so heavy since we passed
that the river had risen and they had had
to ford it up to their waists.
We turned out before dawn next
morning, and it was horribly cold and
damp ; we had been sleeping on the wet
ground, there being no hay for the horses
to eat, and much less for us to sleep on.
\1^^iad to cross a beautiful old bridge
over the wide Schkumba River, and there
was a good deal of delay and waiting
about. The river had risen, and the
bridge did not reach quite far enough, so
ELBASAN 153
the men had to cross a plank at the other
end, and it took ages for the whole regi-
ment to get across. Those who were on
horseback forded the river, which was not
very deep, though very wide, with a very
rapid current. The fields at the other
side were a swamp, and the men were up
to their knees in mud and water.
My company was told off to take up a
position by itself on a range of hills, and
we went up there in the afternoon by a
very bad steep track, through bushes
with very big prickly thorns. The hills
were covered with bracken, which we cut
down to make beds of, and pitched our
tents in a little hollow. We were all by
ourselves up there, and had a very quiet
four days, as we seemed at last to have
shaken off the pursuing Bulgarians, and
154 ELBASAN
it seemed sometimes as if everyone had
forgotten all about us. We were the only
company up there, and were a very funny-
looking camp, with the men sitting about
resting and repairing their clothes, and
washing hanging out on all the bushes;
in fact, we said ourselves that we looked
more like a travelling gipsies' encampment
than the smartest company in the regiment.
Christmas Eve was bright and sunny,
and in the afternoon we visited an Al-
banian village. I was an object of great
curiosity to the inhabitants, especially
the women, and they always asked Lieut.
Jovitch whether I was a woman or a
soldier, and seemed very much puzzled
when he said I was an Englishwoman but
a Serbian soldier. We were sitting out-
side one cottage talking to a very old man
SERBIAN SOLDIERS. A COLD CAMP
Page 1 1 4
ROUND THE CAMP FIRE
Page 1 54
I
ELBASAN 155
and his wife. Poor old thing, she patted
me all over, examining everything I had
on with the deepest interest, and finally
disappeared into the cottage and came
out again with a bowl of sour milk and
some awful-looking bread, of which I ate
as much as I could, not to hurt her feel-
ings. We had given the old man some
money, and I searched my pockets to see
if I could find anything the old woman
would like, and finally, feeling rather like
" Alice in Wonderland " when she " begged
the acceptance of this elegant thimble," I
presented her with a small pocket mirror.
I do not think she had ever seen such a
thing before, and gazed into it with the
greatest delight though she looked about
a hundred and was ugly enough to frighten
the devil.
156 ELBASAX
The Serbian Christmas is not till thir-
teen days later than ours, but we cele-
brated my English Christmas Eve over
the camp fire that night. A plate of
beans and dry bread had to take the place
of roast beef and plum pudding, but we
drank Christmas healths in a small flask
of cognac, after which I played " God
Save the King " on the violin, and we all
stood up and sang it. This violin went
into my long, narrow kit bag, which was
carried on a pack-horse and had managed
to survive its travels, though the damp
had not improved its tone. In the middle
of this performance a soldier walked up
from the town with the news that the
Allies were advancing and that Scoplye had
been retaken by the French, and we were
all fearfully bucked. The men came
ELBASAN 157
crowding up to hear the news, and imme-
diately began making great plans of turn-
ing roimd and marching straight back into
Serbia the way we had come, and we sat
roimd the fire until late, playing and
singing to celebrate the victory. This
news afterwards proved to be incorrect,
but we quite believed it at the time. We
hardly ever did get any news of the out-
side world and the doings of one's own
particular regiment, and more especially
the varying fortunes of one's own parti-
cular company, seemed to be the most
important things in the whole war to us,
and what may have been passing during
that time on other and more important
fronts I did not hear from any reliable
source until we got to Durazzo, and not
very much then. The greater part of the
158 ELBASAN
Serbian Army who went by the northern
route through Montenegro to Scutari I
heard afterwards had an infinitely worse
time than we did, but we did not hear the
tale of their sufferings until later, and much
has already been written about them.
The next day was Christmas Day, and a
Serbian journalist who had spent a great
many years in America walked some
miles over from his own company to wish
me a " Merry Christmas," so that I should
hear the old greeting from someone in
English.
We had quite settled down to our
gipsy life, but the food question had
become a serious problem by now ; bread
was at famine prices, the men had finished
all their corn cobs and had had practically
nothing to eat for two days. I asked the
ELBASAN 159
company Commander if it would be pos-
sible to buy anything for them, and we
sent down into the town and bought a sort
of corn meal for Frs. 200, and had it baked
into flat loaves there in the town, and next
day when we turned out for a fresh start
we gave each man in the company half of
one of my corn meal loaves and a couple
of cigarettes, telling them it was England's
Christmas box to them, which they ate as
they went along, otherwise they would
have had to march all that day on nothing.
As the other companies who had not been
so fortunate saw our men go past munching
the last of their corn meal bread they
called, "Well done. Fourth Company!"
after us, and wanted to join us.
For the first time since we had left
Baboona we had shaken off the Bui-
L
160 ELBASAN
garians and were no longer within sound
of the guns, but we had to press on or
the men would starve.
We had lost hundreds of horses from
exhaustion and starvation — once they fell
they were too weak to rise again— and
their corpses lined the road, or rather
track. Sick or well, the men had to keep
on. No one could be carried, and you
had got to keep on going or die by the
roadside.
The next four or five days we continued
steadily on our way towards Durazzo,
starting about 4 a.m. and generally turning
into camp between 6 and 7, long after
the short winter afternoons had closed in,
so that we had to find our way round our
new camping ground in the dark. The
weather had got considerably warmer,
ELBASAN 161
although the nights were still bitterly
cold, and quite a scorching sun used to
come out for a few hours in the middle of
the day, and this took it out of the tired
men a good deal. Before, when I had
been working in the hospitals, and I
used to ask the men where it hurt them,
I had often been rather puzzled at the
general reply of the new arrivals, " Sve me
boli " (" Everything hurts me "), it seemed
such a vague description and such a curious
malady; but in these days I learnt to
understand perfectly what they meant by
it, when you seem to be nothing but one
pain from the crown of your aching head
to the soles of your blistered feet, and I
thought it was a very good thing that the
next time I was working in a military
hospital I should be able to enter into my
162 ELBASAN
patient's feelings, and realise that all he
felt he wanted was to be let alone to sleep
for about a week and only rouse up for his
meals.
We went slowly and halted every few
hours, sometimes just for a quarter of an
hour, sometimes for a good deal longer,
and the moment the halt was called
everyone used to just drop down on the
ground and fall asleep till our company
Commander would call, " Now then, men,
get up," and we would all pull ourselves
together, everyone rising immediately
without the slightest delay. In the long
midday halt we used to join up with the
others, and the whole regiment would rest
together, and exchange any scraps of news
going. In the evenings the men used to
sit round the fires and gossip, and every-
ELBASAN 163
thing that everybody did or said was dis-
cussed all through the regiment. News
always travels like this among Serbians,
and I have often been astonished after I
had been away from camp to be told the
following day exactly where I had been,
whom I had been with, and what I had
done. I remember once in Kragujewatz
when there were some English officers up
in Belgrade who fondly imagined that
both their presence and their doings there
were a dead secret, in the same curious
way we, in the centre of Serbia, knew all
about them.
Our riding horses were some of them so
starved and exhausted that we could
hardly keep the poor brutes on their feet,
and I used to sometimes walk to give
mine a rest ; but at the same time I should
164 ELBASAN
have felt more sympathy with it if it had
not had a most irritating habit of refusing
to stand still for a moment, but kept
wheeling round and round in circles. It
was a rough mountain pony belonging to
my company Commander, who, when I
joined his company, of course, produced
a " reserve " pony for me. The poor little
brute died two days after we got to Durazzo.
One night we halted on rather funny
camping ground, on the side of a hill
covered with holly bushes, and had to
find our way through them in the dark.
We slept round the fires, as there was not
room to put up tents among the prickly
bushes. Our company Commander, tell-
ing his ordonnance that they were all too
slow for a funeral, lit our fire himself in
two minutes under the shelter of a huge
ELBASAN 165
holly bush, and we were half-way through
supper, very comfortably sitting round a
roaring blaze, while other people were
still looking for a good spot for their fire,
and were asleep at opposite sides of ours
before half the others were well alight.
At last we were nearing our journey's
end; it was the last day's march, and an
unusually long one, too. We passed a
company of Italian soldiers, and some of
the officers came up early in the morning
and visited our camp. Durazzo was being
bombarded from the sea, and we could
hear the boom of the big naval guns in
the distance, but it was all over before we
arrived. We marched that day from 5 a.m.,
which meant, of course, being up at
least an hour before, to 8 p.m., with only
very short and infrequent halts.
166 ELBASAN
About dusk we reached Kavaia, and all
the inhabitants turned out and lined the
streets to watch us go past. There, again,
they put up everything to famine prices,
a tiny flask of cognac which we bought
costing Frs. 6, in addition to which they
would only give us three Italian francs
for our Serbian 10-franc note.
I never saw anything like the mud in
Kavaia ; in the town it was a liquid black
mass, through which men waded far
above their knees, and on the long road
between Kavaia and our camping ground
it was like treacle. It came right above
the tops of my top boots, and one could
hardly drag one's feet out of it. The
road was full of rocks and pits, and every
two or three yards there were dead and
dying horses which had floundered down
ELBASAN 167
to rise no more ; and it was pitch dark
and very cold.
Though not very many miles, it took us
nearly three hours to do this bit from
Kavaia to our camp, there being a block
on the road in front of us, and we were
absolutely exhausted, when at last we
saw the camp fires of the First Company
twinkling on the hillside. We kept push-
ing on and on, and seemed to be never
getting any nearer to them ; owing to the
darkness and the constant blocks caused
by the narrow approach to our camp, the
road got frightfully congested. I did the
latter part of the way on foot, too, and
began to wonder if those really were camp
fires ahead of us or sort of will-o'-the-wisps
getting farther away. At last we turned
on to the hillside by the sea, which was to
M2
168 ELBASAN
be our resting-place for the next month.
I was lying on the grass talking to a
soldier, while my orderly put up my tent.
He said he was very tired, and I said we
all were, but would soon be able to turn
in. " Yes," he said thoughtfully, not
complaining at all, but merely stating a
fact, " but you have ridden most of the
way and I have walked, and presently
you will have something to eat, and I
shan't." There was no supper waiting for
the tired man. In the Austrian Army I
hear the officers live in luxury while their
men starve, but that could most certainly
not be said of our officers — beans and bread,
and not too much of either, and we had
bought the bread ourselves. He was
stoking up the fire a little later on, and I
called him over and gave him my piece of
ELBASAN 169
bread. He shook his head and refused to
take it at first, saying, "No, you'll need
that yourself," and not till I had quite
convinced him that I had enough without
it would he take it. We all turned in
dead to the world that night, but very
glad to have at last reached the coast, and
I completely forgot that it was New
Year's Eve, though certainly even had I
remembered I should not have sat up to
see the New Year in.
CHAPTER VIII
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY AT DURAZZO —
AEROPLANE RAIDS
Next day was New Year's Day, and
everyone came up and wished me a
Happy New Year, our English New Year,
that is, as theirs, of course, did not come
till thirteen days later, and we all hoped
that the New Year might prove happier
than the old one had been.
The whole regiment moved their tents
up on to the hill and got ship-shape, which,
of com'se, we had not attempted to do in
the dark last night. All the men hurried
up to the top of the hill to have their
170
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 171
first look at the sea, most of them never
having seen it before, and they seemed
never tired of lying gazing at it. The sea
looked quite close, but in reality there was
a river and a wide swamp between us and
it, as I found to my cost one day when I
tried to go down there to bathe. It was
lovely weather, and that afternoon the
band played for the first time, and we all
sat about, or paid visits to each other's
tents, and congratulated ourselves that we
seemed to be nearing the end of our
troubles, though as a matter of fact many
poor fellows who had struggled on bravely
through Albania succumbed in Durazzo,
and thousands more later on in Corfu from
the effects of starvation and exposure.
We were about 10 miles from the town
of Durazzo, though it did not look
172 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
anything like so far, and we could see it
plainly at the end of the long line of
yellow sands jutting out into the sea.
There were several wrecks round there,
one of them a Greek steamer, which had
hit a floating mine. There were a great
many of these floating mines about, and
the Austrian submarines were also very
active, adding immensely to the difficulty
of getting food and supplies, which all had
to be brought by sea to the troops.
A couple of days after I rode into
Durazzo with three of the officers to see
the sights of the town. The first sight I
did see was a real live English sergeant-
major walking down the street. I could
hardly believe my eyes, it seemed so long
since I had seen an Englishman, and I did
not know there were any there. I almost
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 173
fell on his neck in my excitement, and he
seemed equally astonished and pleased to
see a fellow countrywoman. He took me
up at once to the headquarters of the
British Adriatic Mission, and fed me on tea
and cakes, while we were waiting for
Colonel to come in. The same man
was also afterwards, strange to say, the
first man I met in Salonica, as he was
acting as Captain of the tug which came
to take us off the French steamer on which
we had come from Corfu. Afterwards I
had limch with Colonel and his staff.
It was the first time for so long that I
had sat on a chair and eaten my meals off
a table with a table-cloth that I had almost
forgotten how to do it. I went back late
in the afternoon laden with simdry luxuries
they had given me in the way of butter,
174 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
jam, and a tinned plum pudding, and also
two loaves of bread which I had bought in
the town, as in those days when we got
near a shop we always bought a loaf of
bread, in the same way that people at
home would buy cake.
I rode back with an artillery officer, who
invited me to lunch next day, the other
side of Kavaia, and I promised I would
come if I could borrow a better horse than
the one I was then riding. The road from
our camp to Durazzo was in a shocking
condition, and it was very hard to ride
along it after dark; there were so many
dead horses strewn all along it that it
was a wonder they did not breed a pesti-
lence.
On my way to my limcheon party next
day I met my old friend whose " Slava
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 175
day " we had celebrated on the top of
Mount Kalabac, and stopped there for
supper coming back. We had supper by
the camp fire with an orchestra of two
Tziganes, who sang and played the Serbian
airs on their violins. These Tziganes are
all very musical and would sooner part
with anything than their violin. Some of
them play very well, and they can do a
very difficult thing — sing a song and play
their own accompaniment with chords on
the violin at the same time.
The next day, the men having by now
had a little time to get rested, there was
a big parade and inspection, though we
were a somewhat ragged-looking regiment
for a full-dress parade.
On the Serbian Christmas Eve there
was a great ceremony, which is always
176 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
kept up. Of course, we only kept it on a
small scale, bu^ I was told that in Bel-
grade in peace time it was a very splendid
affair indeed. This was cutting the Christ-
mas oak. All the officers rode out to a
wood, where the band played, and there
was a sort of service conducted by the
priest, and then we came back carrying a
small oak tree, and there were refresh-
ments and much drinking of healths.
We kept up Christmas festivities for
three days, and the men had extra
rations, and all had roast pig, which even
the very poorest family in Serbia always
has on Christmas Day. In the evening I
was invited to dinner with the Colonel of
the regiment and his staff ; we drank the
healths of England and Serbia together,
and kept it up till very late. They put a
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 177
gold coin in their pudding like we put
things in our English plum puddings, and
I got the slice containing it. They told
me it was very lucky, and I always wear
it now. On Christmas Eve they roast
nuts like we do on Twelfth Night. It is
the same date as our Twelfth Night, and
I was surprised to find that they had
many of these old customs which are now
found more in Ireland than in England.
Although they did their best to make a
bluff at having a happy Christmas it was
a very sad and homesick one for them
really, not knowing in the least where their
families were spending theirs, or if they
would ever meet again.
We had fixed ourselves up pretty com-
fortably by now. By digging out a
place about 2 ft. deep, building up the
178 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
earth into a wall all round and pitching
the tent on to the top of that you can turn
a small bivouac tent into quite a large and
commodious abode, which will contain a
camp bed if you have one and a fireplace
with an earth chimney for the smoke, and
when you have a fire going and four or
five of you are sitting in there no one need
complain of the cold, even on the coldest
evening; and the evenings were still very
cold indeed, although the days were hot.
I used to ride into Durazzo fairly often
to see my English friends there, who were
more than kind and hospitable to me, and
used to give me many little luxuries to
take back with which to eke out our
slender rations, as, njo longer having the
hard exercise every day to put an edge on
our appetites, we seemed rather to have
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 179
turned against beans. Though a corporal,
I always messed with the officers.
llie British Adriatic Mission were feed-
ing the Serbian Army, and were doing
wonders, though owing to the constant
arrival of fresh troops and the scarcity of
ovens for baking their bread (although
they were building fresh ones as fast as
ever they could) the men were still on
half rations of bread, and some days had
to have biscuits instead ; but, of course, the
men could have eaten a lot more after
their months of starvation. Among other
things they had had some coffee given to
them, but it was not much use, as they had
no sugar, and the kindly inhabitants of
Durazzo had made a corner in sugar and
put the price up to Frs. 16 a kilo ; so it was
impossible to buy it for them, and I
180 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
racked my brains as to how I could get
some at least for my own company. I
asked the head of the B.A.M., but he, of
course, could not make an exception of
one particular company, even if it had
an English corporal (I had been made cor-
poral on New Year's Day, and promoted
sergeant three months later), but he said
he would see what could be done and
turned the matter over to his Adjutant.
He, being a young man of resource, went
to a Red Cross organisation and demanded
a year's rations of sugar for an English
nm'se. I do not know what the daily
ration of sugar for an English nurse may
be, but, anyhow, one year's worked out at
a good-sized case, which I brought back
in triumph (having borrowed a pack-
horse in Durazzo for that purpose) and
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 181
divided up amongst my company, and
perfect peace reigned in the camp, the men
all spending a very happy afternoon sitting
round their little camp fires, making end-
less little cups of sweet black Turkish
coffee. I hope the American Red Cross
will forgive me for sharing my year's
rations with belligerents if they should
ever chance to read this.
I got myself into sad disgrace one day,
however, by going away from the camp
without leave. An officer from another
battalion was going to limch at another
camp some miles away, and he invited
me to ride over with him. We started
very early in the morning, and, as I could
not find the Commander of my company
to ask leave, I just went. We stayed
there, not only for lunch, but for supper
182 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
and all the evening as well, and I would
not like to say what time it was when we
got back. The next morning my company
Commander pointed out to me one of the
soldiers up on the hillside doing four
hours' punishment drill, standing up there
with his rifle, accoutrements and heavy
pack in the hot sun, and I was told that
on this occasion I should be let off with a
reprimand (although I had been three
months in the Army and ought to know
better by this time), but if I did not see
the error of my ways I should find myself
doing something similar to that next time,
or five days' C.B. I got my revenge,
however, a few days later, when he fell
sick, and I returned to my original voca-
tion of nurse. He was a very docile
patient for a week, though after that he
SERBIAN SOLDIERS IN THEIR OWN SERBIAN UNIFORMS,
BEFORE GETTING ENGLISH KHAKI
Page 183
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 183
suddenly thought it was time to reassert
his authority, so got up one day when my
back was turned, and ate everything
I had not allowed him to eat while in
bed.
I had a telegram one day from Durazzo
from my friend Miss Simmonds, telling me
to come and meet her in Durazzo at once.
She and I had worked together in the
Serbian hospitals ever since the beginning
of the war, and as soon as she got my
letter saying I was starting back for
Serbia she had left New York to join me
again, but, of course, could not find me,
as by the time she got to Salonica I had
disappeared into Albania. She had been
doing most wonderful work ever since,
organising relief for Serbian refugees and
personally conducting shiploads of them
N 2
184 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
from Salonica to Corsica, Marseilles and
goodness knows where. Among other
little odd jobs she discovered a whole
colony of them in Brindisi who had been
without food for two days ; so without any
further red tape proceeded to hire car-
riages, drive round the town and buy up
everything in the eatable line which was
to be had wherewith to feed them.
I at once borrowed a horse and rode
out to Durazzo to meet her. I did not
know in the least where to find her there,
but most of the people in the town seemed
to have heard of her, and I finally located
her at the Serbian Crown Prince's house,
where she had gone to be presented. He
was not going to see any more people
that day, but when he heard that I had
arrived he very kindly said that he would
SERBIAN CHUISTMAS DAY 185
see me too. I was not exactly dressed ta
be presented to Royalty, as I was still
wearing the clothes (the only ones I had)
in which I had come through Albania,
besides having just had a hot and dusty
10 mile ride, but that doesn't matter in
wartime. He was most charming, and
decorated us both with the Sveti Sava
medal.
After that we went on board her ship^
in which she was sailing that night with
1,500 refugees which she was taking
to Corsica. We had a busy evening,
and had our work cut out for us
feeding 1,500 refugees on bully beef and
biscuits. The ship, which was a small
Greek one, was simply packed, and it was
no easy task on the pitch dark decks and
down in the holds.
186 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
I slept in town that night. One of the
Enghsh officers was waiting on the quay
for me when I got back at midnight, and
he had found me room in an hotel. The
hotels in Durazzo are the limit, but this
one did at a pinch. He asked the boy in
the hotel if he could make us some tea.
He said he could as far as the boiling water
went, but he had neither tea nor sugar. A
Serbian offioer, a stranger to us both, who
happened to be passing on his way to bed,
overheard this, and immediately said he
had both tea and sugar, which he would
give us ; and not only did he do this, but
came back afterwards and apologised for
not having any cognac to put into it. As
my friend remarked, " Really the Serbians
do give us points in the way of manners ;
here is a man who, not satisfied with
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 187
seeing to the comfort of two people who
are total strangers to him, and providing
them with his own tea and sugar, comes
back and actually apologises because he
has not cognac as well ! "
The next morning I went round to the
British Adriatic Mission, and while I was
having breakfast there there was a most
terrific crash, followed by others in quick
succession. I left my breakfast and went
out into the street to see what was to be
seen. Five Austrian aeroplanes were circ-
ling round and round overhead, apparently
dropping bombs as fast as they could.
The streets of Durazzo are very, very
narrow, and the town is very small
and very crowded. People were running
as hard as they could to get out of the
way — at least, the Italians were running,
188 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
the Serbians always thought it beneath
their dignity to do so. I was standing
with a Serbian artillery officer who knew
all about it and could almost always
guess pretty well where they were going
to fall. Looking up into the clear blue
sky you could see the bombs quite well
as they left the aeroplanes : first of all
they looked like a silvery streak of light,
and then like a thin streak of mist falling
through the sky, till they hit some building
with a crash, smothering everyone in the
neighbourhood with a powdery white dust.
Two of them fell in almost identically
the same spot at the end of the street
about a hundred yards from us, and
several more round about. Another
officer joined us presently who was very
much annoyed because he was in the
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 189
middle of being shaved when the first
bomb fell, and the Italian barber had,
without more ado, instantly dropped his
razor and fled, so that he had to come
out with only half his face shaved. He
was rather glad afterwards, however, when
he found out that had the barber re-
mained he would have had no face left to
shave, as when we walked back to the
shop we found that a bomb had gone
clean through the roof and the barber was
standing outside anathematising aeroplanes
for ruining his business. Altogether they
dropped twenty-five bombs in about a
quarter of an hour within a radius of a
little over a quarter of a mile and killed a
good many people.
There was a wide subterranean drain
leading from the town to the sea, and down
190 SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY
this hundreds of Itahans crawled, but I
think if I were given the choice of crawHng
down a Durazzo drain in close proximity
to some hundreds of the natives of that
town or being killed by a bomb I would
choose the latter. One day previously
some bombs had fallen in the neighbour-
hood of a camp of Italian soldiers, who
had to vacate it. A company of hungry
Serbians near by had with great pre-
sence of mind seized the opportunity
to go in and clear the deserted camp
of all the bread and everything eatable
it contained, and they were heard to
express a wish afterwards that there
might be a visitation of aeroplanes every
day. When it was all over I went back
again, and, finding the headquarters of
the British Adriatic Mission still stand-
SERBIAN CHRISTMAS DAY 191
ing, sat down to a fresh lot of bacon and
eggs for breakfast, such luxuries not being
obtainable every day.
CHAPTER IX
WE GO TO CORFU
We remained near Durazzo for a month,
the men resting and recuperating after
their hard time.
There were a lot of young recruits who
had been brought through with the Army
from Serbia, but who had not yet been
formally sworn in, and one morning this
ceremony took place. The whole regi-
ment was formed up in a square in the
centre of which stood the priest with a
table in front of him, on which were a
bowl of holy water, with a bunch of leaves
192
WE GO TO CORFU 193
beside it, a Serbian Bible, and a large
brass cross. All the officers were drawn
up in a double line facing the table, and
the recruits behind them again, with the
whole regiment forming the other two
sides of the square and the band a little
way behind.
The priest read a sort of short service,
and then the flag-bearer carried the regi-
mental flag up to the table while the band
played. After that the priest walked all
down the line of officers with the basin of
holy water in his hand, and dipping the
bunch of leaves into it sprinkled them each
on the forehead and held up the cross for
them to kiss ; when that was over the
swearing in of the new recruits began, and,
as I had not yet been sworn in, I was one
of them. We all stood at the salute and
194 WE GO TO CORFU
repeated the oath all together, sentence
by sentence after the priest, swearing
loyalty to Serbia and King Peter, and
after that we marched in single file past
the table, removing our caps as we did so
for the priest to sprinkle our foreheads,
and then kissed the cross, the priest's
hand, and, last of all, the regimental flag.
It was a very impressive ceremony, wind-
ing up by the band playing the Serbian
National Anthem while we stood at the
salute.
All the officers came up and shook
hands with me afterwards and congratu-
lated me on now being properly enrolled
as a soldier in the Serbian Army.
We were getting very tired of the
Adriatic coast, and now that we were
feeling rested again we were anxious to
WE GO TO CORFU 195
be once more on the move and take the
next step towards getting back to Serbia.
Speculation was rife as to where we were
going to be sent to be reorganised and
refitted; no one knew for certain, and
there were the wildest rumours about
Algiers, France, or Alexandria, but at last
the glad news came that we were really-
going, and to Corfu.
But there was still a six or seven days'
march to Vallona, where the regiment was
to embark. Doctors came round and
every man was medically examined to see
if he was fit for the march, as those who
were not were to be embarked at Durazzo.
We had heard that the road to Vallona
was very bad, and in some places knee-
deep in mud and water, and nobody was
very anxious for the march if he could
196 WE GO TO CORFU
go from Durazzo, so one and all declared
that they had rheumatism or else sore feet;
but eventually only a small percentage,
among them sixty men from the Fourth
Company, and about half a dozen officers,
from the regiment were declared to be
unfit. I was perfectly fit, but, as I was
told I might do whichever I liked, I
thought I might as well embark at Durazzo
with those from my own company ; so
on the 3rd of February we left our camp
and went into Durazzo to wait for the
steamer, as it was uncertain which day
she would sail.
I and some of the officers who were not
on duty took rooms in the town, and there
we had to wait for four days. We found
some difficulty in feeding ourselves; there
seemed to be hardly anything to buy, and
WE GO TO CORFU 197
what there was was at famine prices, and
our Serbian 10-franc notes were only
worth three and a half Greek or Italian
francs. We had to pay 50 francs for a
bottle of common red wine, which any-
where else would have cost a franc. One
day some Italian doctors invited us to
lunch at their hospital; they were most
excellent hosts, and it was a very large
and merry luncheon party. Hardly any
two people could talk the same language,
and English, French, German, Spanish,
Italian and Serbian got all mixed up
together into a sort of Esperanto of our
own.
Every day as regularly as clockwork,
between half-past ten and eleven, we
had an Austrian aeroplane raid, and
occasionally in the afternoon as well, and
198 WE GO TO CORFU
we got so used to them that if we did not
hear the first bomb in time we used to
gaze up into the sky and wonder why they
were so late, but the worst raid was when
we were actually embarking.
Embarking is always a tedious business,
and is always inseparably connected in my
mind with hours of standing about on your
own weary feet, like a flock of tired sheep,
in weather that is always either too hot
or too cold, or else raining, patiently
waiting for orders.
We were embarked on large flat barges,
and sent off to two or three small Italian
steamers in the harbour. The one that
I was on was crammed with men, and we
had just got alongside the steamer when
an aeroplane came exactly overhead. We
made a fairly big mark with the large
WE GO TO CORFU 199
crowded barge alongside the steamer, and
it passed over us three times, dropping
bombs all around as if they were shelling
peas. Backwards and forwards it came,
columns of water shooting up, now 50 yards
to the right, now a little to the left, showing
where the bombs hit the water harmlessly,
one of them barely clearing a hospital
ship at anchor. Every moment it seemed
as if the next one must drop in the middle
of our barge, but we were pretty well
seasoned to anything by now, and, what-
ever may have been our inside feelings, we
sat still and stolidly watched sudden death
hovering over our heads in the blue sky,
but it didn't seem somehow like playing
the game when we couldn't retaliate at all.
The Captain of the Italian steamer got
so exasperated that he shouted that he
02
200 WE GO TO CORFU
was not going to have his steamer sunk on
our account, and that we were to sheer off,
as he would not take us on board at all;
so our tug towed us back to the pier for
further orders, and we were eventually
sent off to another steamer.
I and the two officers I was with in the
end foimd ourselves embarked on one
steamer, with most of the men from our
own regiment on another, and our servants
and all our luggage on a third. By that
time it was about 1 o'clock, and, as we
had been standing about in the hot sun
since 5 a.m. and had had nothing to eat,
we began to feel as if we should like some
breakfast; so we were any thing but pleased
to be told upon enquiry that nobody could
get anything to eat on that ship, neither
officers nor men.
WE GO TO CORFU 201
" Now then, Corporal," said my com-
pany Commander to me," you talk French;
go and see what you can do." So I
obediently went off to hunt up the Military
Commander of the ship. He first informed
me that there was no food on the boat,
and that nobody could get anything until
8 o'clock that evening, and seemed to
be inclined to let the matter go at that,
but I was not going to take that answer
back if I could help it ; so told him that I
didn't think much of his way of treating his
English Allies, whereupon, having turned
that over in his mind, he said I could have
something alone. Of course that was no
use; so after a little more persuasion I
finally got him to order the steward to
serve dinner to the two officers and myself
in the saloon in about an hour as soon as
202 WE GO TO CORFU
it could be got ready, and while waiting
for it we could have some coffee, if I could
get anybody to make it for me. I accor-
dingly went round to the galley and inter-
viewed the cook, who informed me that
the man who made the coffee was asleep
in his bunk and I couldn't wake him.
" Oh, can't I ? " I said (in the words of
the man when told by the steward that
he could not be sick in the saloon), '' you'll
see if I can't."
" Are you an officer ? " he inquired,
with that sort of veiled impertinence that
the lower class Italians and Greeks are such
past-masters of.
" No, I am not," I snapped, " I am a
corporal ; now which is that coffee-man's
cabin ? " and, on it being pointed out to
me, I beat such a devil's tattoo on the door
WE GO TO CORFU 203
with my riding- whip that in half a minute
a very tousled and sleepy head appeared,
and enquired what on earth was the matter.
I told him I wanted three cups of coffee
in the saloon at once, and he was so as-
tonished that he got up forthwith and
made them, and I went back in triumph
to report, and felt rewarded on being told
that I had done very well.
The next morning we were transferred
in Vallona harbour on to a big Italian
steamer, a fine boat, where they treated
us very well. We reached Corfu about
1 a.m., and disembarking began there and
then. We hung on till the last, as we had
nowhere to spend the night, our tents,
blankets, etc., being on another boat, and I
had not even an overcoat with me and it was
very cold, but at 3 a.m. we also had to go.
204 WE GO TO CORFU
We had been looking forward to Corfu
as a sort of land flowing with milk and
honey, with a magnificent climate and
everything that was good, but our ardour
was rather damped when we landed at
that hour at a small quay, feet deep in
mud, miles away from the town, and
about 8 miles away from our camp, so
we were told. We did not know in which
direction our camp was, and, even had we
got there, would have been no better off
without a tent or blankets; so we spent
the remainder of the night sitting on a
packing-case beside the sentry's fire, and
I was glad enough to be able to borrow an
overcoat from the Serbian officer in charge
of the quay, who was just going off duty.
There was one of the most beautiful
sunrises I have ever seen, but under some
WE GO TO CORFU 205
circumstances you feel you would most
willingly barter the most gorgeous pano-
rama of scenery for a cup of hot tea.
We had a long, hot walk the next morning
till we found our own division, where the
sixty men from our company were camped
pending the arrival of the Commandant
of the regiment and the rest who were
coming via Vallona.
Corfu may be a lovely climate and a
health resort and everything else that is
delightful at any other time in the year,
but it was a bitter blow to us when it
rained for about six weeks without stopping
after our arrival, added to which there was
no wood, and camp fires were forbidden,
I suppose for fear that the men might
take to cuttinop down the olive trees with
which the island is covered. There was
206 WE GO TO CORFU
no hay at first for us to sleep on, and the
incessant wet, combined with the effects
of bully beef, on men whose stomachs were
absolutely destroyed by months of semi-
starvation was largely responsible for the
terrible amount of sickness and very high
mortality among the troops during the first
month of our stay there. This was espe-
cially the case among the boys and young
recruits, who, less hardy than the trained
soldiers, were completely broken down by
their late hardships and died by thousands
on the hospital island of Vido. They could
not be buried in the small island, dying
as they were at the rate of 150 a day, and
the bodies were taken out to sea. The
Serbs are not a maritime nation, and the
idea of a burial at sea is repugnant to
them. I heard one touching story. An
WE GO TO CORFU 207
old man came to the island to see his son,
but he had died the day before. " Where
is his grave ? " he asked, " that I may tell
my old wife I saw his last resting-place.
We had seven sons ; six were killed in the
war, and he was the seventh and youngest."
The kind-hearted doctor lied bravely and
well. " That is it," he said, pointing to
a little wooden cross among a few others,
where some graves had been made one
day when it was too rough for the tug to
call. How could he tell the poor old
father that even then his son's body was
lying out on the wooden jetty waiting to
be carried out to his nameless grave in
the blue Ionian Sea ?
We found there had been some hitch in
the commissariat arrangements, and there
was no food for oiu' sixty men. We bought
208 WE GO TO CORFU
them some bread next day, but bread was
3 francs a loaf, and a third of a loaf
to a man with nothing else was not enough
to keep them going, while endless red tape
was being unwound before their proper
rations came along. They never made a
complaint; but, though we could have
bought bread for ourselves, it nearly choked
us with the men standing round silently
watching and wondering what w^e were
going to do for them.
On the second morning, seeing an empty
motor-lorry coming along, I had a sudden
inspiration and boarded it, dashing down
the steep bank to the road, telling them
that I would be back in the evening from
town with something for them, and taking
an orderly with me. It was about fifteen
miles' drive into the town of Corfu, and I
WE GO TO CORFU 209
tramped about all day in the pouring rain
from one official to another, from the
English to the French, from the French to
the Serbians, and back again to the French,
till I was heartily sick of it, and had I
had the money would have bought the
stuff in the town and had done with it.
There was plenty of bread at the bakery,
but, of course, they could not give it to me
without a proper requisition, which appa-
rently I could not sign because I was not
authorised to do so. It was getting to-
wards evening, and I was beginning to
despair, and was thinking of doing the
best I could with a hundred francs I
had borrowed, when I thought I would
have one more try with the French
authorities. I was wet through myself,
as I had had no time to stop for a coat
210 WE GO TO CORFU
when the lorry came along, and had been
too busy and too worried to get anything
to eat all day, but anyhow this time I
managed to pitch them such a pitiful tale
of woe about the sufferings of the men,
and the awful time I was having trying to
get them something to eat, that I quite
softened their hearts, and they said they
would give me what I wanted without any
further signature, but that I must not
make a precedent of this unofficial way of
doing business. I was overjoyed, and sent
my orderly off at once to hunt up a carriage,
and we retiu^ned to camp in triumph about
9 o'clock with a whole sackful of bread,
another of tinned beef, and two large
earthenware jars of wine, which I bought
on the way. There were plenty of the
men waiting, when they heard my carriage
WE GO TO CORFU 211
arrive, to dash down to the road and carry
the stuff up to the camp, and there was
great rejoicing over the success of my
expedition. I was soon warm and dry and
having some supper myself. The men were
all right so far, but another day's short
rations would certainly have seen some of
them sick.
The question of transport was fearfully
difficult, and the French and English
authorities were working night and day to
feed the troops, and, of course, they could
never have got through the work if things
had not been done in order ; so I was duly
grateful that under the special circum-
stances they let me carry out such an
unauthorised raid.
About a week later the rest of the com-
pany arrived about 10 o'clock one evening,
212 WE GO TO CORFU
and a sergeant proudly told me that our
Fourth Company were all very fit and not
a man sick or fallen out.
We moved to another camp up in
the hills, a nice place, but very far from
anywhere, though I found that I could
get about anywhere I wanted to on the
motor-lorries which used to come in with
bread. The A.S.C. drivers of these lorries
must have had a hard time at first ; the
roads were very bad and the weather
shocking, and they were working sixteen
hours a day carrying supplies, but they
were full of pity for the deplorable con-
dition of the Serbian soldiers, and were
willingly working night and day to alleviate
it.
One of the English officers gave me a
small Italian tent in place of the little
WE GO TO CORFU 213
Serbian bivouac one I had been sleeping
in. It was a capital little tent, very
light and absolutely waterproof. My
orderly built a foundation of stones about
2 ft. high, with the chinks filled in with
earth, and pitched the tent on the top
of that, so that it was quite high enough
to stand up in and also to hold a camp
bed and a rubber bath, and he then made
a nice little garden and planted it with
shrubs and flowers, with a little wall all
round ornamented with red bully-beef
tins with plants in them, and it looked
awfully nice.
The thing we missed most was not being
able to have any fires to sit round. One
day I came back on a lorry containing a
load of wood intended for somewhere
else, but I had got past any scruples
214 WE GO TO CORFU
about commandeering anything where my
own company was concerned; so I per-
suaded the driver to drop a few big logs
off on the road at the nearest point to
our camp, and we had at least one small
fire for some time afterwards, and any-
body who liked could come and boil his
billy-can and make his tea at that.
The Serbian Relief Fund was short-
handed and very busy, and I obtained
permission to leave the camp for a few
weeks and take up my quarters in town
to give them a hand. Several shiploads
of stuff had just come in, and everything
had to be landed on the quay on lighters
and then removed from there at once, as
the quay could not be blocked up, to one
or other of their two store-houses, w^hich
were at opposite ends of the harbour. One
WE GO TO CORFU 215
of these store-houses had only just been
acquired, and, as it was about 6 in. deep
in coal dust, it had all to be scrubbed and
cleaned out for the arrival of fresh bales,
and that was my first job. I got a gang
of Serbian soldiers, and we had a strenuous
day's work with the very inefficient tools
at our disposal, but we managed by the
evening to get everything ship-shape and
the floors clean, though we all got rather
damp and coal-dusty in the process.
The quay was a most interesting place,
though I should have enjoyed the work
more if it had not poured steadily all day
and every day, as there was no cover
anywhere. French, English, and Serbians
were all working there together, each
trying to be the first to seize upon labour
and transport both by water and land for
P2
216 WE GO TO CORFU
the particular job he was responsible
for. There were a number of ships in
the harbour waiting to be unloaded, and
everyone was working as hard as he
could, and things were considerably com-
plicated by the fact that hardly one of
them could speak the other's language.
It was quite a usual thing to find an
Englishman, who could not speak French,
trying to explain to a French official
that he wanted a fatigue party of Serbian
soldiers to unload a certain lighter, and
neither of them being able to explain
to the said fatigue party, when they had
got them, what it was they wanted them
to do.
There was always a company of Serbian
soldiers for work on the quay, and a fresh
relay of men came on at 6 a.m., at midday.
WE GO TO CORFU 217
and at 6 p.m., and you had to be there
sharp on time if you wanted your men,
or else you would find they had all been
snapped up by someone else. As I could
speak French and enough Serbian to get
along very well, most of my work was on
the quay, and I was often called in to act
as interpreter. As I did not want to get
down there at 6 a.m., however, I got a
friendly English corporal, who had to be
on duty then, to get twice as many men
as he wanted himself, and then give me
half of them when I came down. I was
rather afraid of the English Tommies at
first, and thought they would be sure to
laugh at a woman corporal, but, on the
contrary, there was nothing they would
not do to help me, and the French soldiers
were just the same.
218 WE GO TO CORFU
I was superintending the unloading of
some goods from a lighter one day, which
all had to be transferred to another lighter,
and taken across to the warehouse that
evening. We were all very tired and wet,
and the men were slacking off, and it
didn't seem, at the rate we were going on,
as if we should get through before 9 or
10 o'clock that night. The Serbian ser-
geant tried to buck them up, but the men
were fed up and were just doing about as
little as they possibly could. It is worse
than useless to bully a Serbian soldier if
he doesn't want to do anything ; so, as I
wanted to get back to the hotel to dinner,
I went on quite another tack. I told
them I had been working for them all day
since early in the morning, and was tired
and hungry, and that if they were going
WE GO TO CORFU 219
to spend another three hours over the job
I should get no dinner. The effect was
magical. They all at once got terribly
worried on my account, began to work
like steam, and in an hour we had the whole
thing done, and they were enquiring in a
brotherly manner if it was all right, and
if I would be in time for dinner now.
All these poor fellows working down on
the quay had had their uniforms taken
away from them and burnt, and had been
provided with a blue corduroy suit for
working in. Their old ones, though dirty,
were warm, and their new ones were very
thin, and in most cases they had hardly
any underclothes; so whenever I had a
gang of men working under me down at
the warehouse I used to fit them out with
warm sweaters, etc., of which we had
220 WE GO TO CORFU
plenty, out of one of the broken bales.
I used to make them work hard for a couple
of hours, and then sit down for five minutes
and have a cigarette, and then go on again
for another hard spell. The Serbian ser-
geants used to be very much amused at
my methods, but I always found they
answered very well. They were always
keen to be on my gang, and everyone said
I got more work out of them than anyone
else could.
There were a lot of new English
uniforms, but the French authorities
would not issue them unless there were
enough underclothes to go with them,
and these they were short of. However,
I got a promise of underclothes from the
Serbian Relief Fund, and then my troubles
began. First I had to get a paper signed
OFFICERS SITTING OUTSIDE MY TENT
Paze 220
COLONEL MILITCH ON DIANA
Page 244
WE GO TO CORFU 221
by the English saying they would give
them if the French approved ; then
another, signed by the French, that they
did approve and would give the uniforms ;
then one signed by the Serbian Minister
of War ; then back to the French again
to be countersigned ; then back to the
Minister of War ; then to the Serbian
warehouse, who refused to give them
because I hadn't got somebody else's
signature, and so on and so on. To
cut a long story short, it took three whole
days walking round Corfu in the pouring
rain before I could get all those papers
sufficiently signed, including three visits
to the Minister of War, and even then the
transport remained to be found, as the
motor-lorries were fully occupied carrying
bread.
222 WE GO TO CORFU
I had airily promised the French that
I thought the EngHsh authorities could
gtve me the transport; so I went up to
them, and they said they would see what
they could do.
" How much stuff have you ? " inquired
the officer in charge.
" Three thousand two hundred and fifty
uniforms," I replied, " and the same
number of vests and pants."
" Well, that doesn't tell me anything,"
he said ; " I want to know the bulk and
weight : you're no good as a corporal if
you can't tell me that. Let me know
exactly by eleven o'clock to-morrow morn-
ing, and I'll see what I can do."
Here was a poser, for, though I said at
once that I would let him know, I had not
the faintest idea of how to work it out ;
WE GO TO CORFU 223
but fortunately bethought myself of my
sheet anchor, the big English corporal
on the quay, who always seemed to be
able to solve any difficulty ; and, sure
enough, he did it for me, and I telephoned
the required information. In the end I
got the stuff loaded on to a barge and took
it myself to a point about 2 miles from
my camp, whence it was carried up by a
company, and we had the proud distinc-
tion of being the first regiment to be fitted
out in new, clean English khaki uniforms.
When not on the quay there was plenty
to do in the warehouses, sorting out the
bales, or taking them across the harbour
in our little tug, which was quite a journey,
but I eventually got a chill and had to
lay off for a bit, as the result of one
wetting too many.
224 WE GO TO CORFU
I used to go back to camp every
Saturday afternoon and Sunday, and I
always managed to take up a couple of
cases of something, generally given me
by the Serbian Relief Fund ; either things
for the ambulance or condensed milk or
golden syrup for the men. Condensed
milk was very much appreciated, as it
meant that they each got a big bowl of
cafe au lait for breakfast for three morn-
ings, whereas, as a rule, they don't have
anything until lunch.
One day an incident occurred which
touched me very greatly. The non-com-
missioned officers and men of the Fourth
Company formed a committee among
themselves and drew up an address,
which they presented me with, and which
a man in the regiment who knew English
WE GO TO CORFU 225
afterwards translated for me as literally
as possible. An English major, to whom
I once showed it, told me if that were his
he should value it more than a whole
string of medals, and as that is how I
feel about it, coming as it did spon-
taneously from my own men, I put the
translation in here :
" To the high-esteemed
"MISS FLORA SANDES,
" CORFU.
" Esteemed Miss Sandes !
" Soldiers of the Fourth Company,
1st Battalion, 2nd Inf. Rgmt., ' Knjaza
Michaila,' Moravian Division, 1st (Call)
Reserves ; touched with your nobleness,
wish with this letter to pay their respects
— and thankfulness to you ; have chosen
226 WE GO TO CORFU
a committee to hand to you this letter of
thankfuhiess.
" Miss Sandes !
" Serbian soldier is proud because in
his midst he sees a noble daughter of
England, whose people is an old Serbian
friend, and to-day their armies are arm-
in-arm fighting for common idea, and you
Miss Sandes should be proud that you
are in position to do a good, to help a
Serbian soldier — Serbian soldier will
always respect acts of your kindness
and deep down in his heart will write
you kind acts and remember them for
ever.
" Few months have passed since you
came among us, and you shared good and
bad with us. During this time you have
often helped us to pass through hard-
WE GO TO CORFU 227
ships, buying food for us, and finan-
cially.
" Thanking you in the name of all
the soldiers, we are greeting you with
exclamation :
" Long life to our ally England,
" Long life to Serbia,
" Long life to their heroic Armies,
" Long life to noble Miss Sandes !
" Naredniks (Sergeant- Majors) —
" Milcontije Simitch
" Rangel Miloshevitch
" Podnaredniks {Sergeants)—
" Milisav Stamenkovitch
" Yanatchko Todorovitch
" Bozidar Milenkovitch
" Kaplars (Corporals) —
" Vladimar Stankovitch
" Milan Jovanovitch
I
228 WE GO TO CORFU
" Dragutin Rangjelovitch
" Aleksa Miloshevitch
" Zaphir Arsitch
" Vojnitsi (Soldiers) —
" Milivoye Pavlovitch
" Milorad Taskavitch
" Rangel Mladenovitch
" Dragoljub Milovanovitch
'* Alexandar Iwkovitch
" 4th Comp., 1st Battl., 2nd Inf. Rgt.
" No. 1024 (Official Stamp).
" To Miss Sandes, Corporal, volunteer of
this Comp.—
" Please receive this little, but from
heart of my soldiers, declaration of thank-
fulness for all (for help) that you have
done for them until now, and in time,
when they are far away from dear ones
and loving ones at home.
M
WE GO TO CORFU 229
" To their wishes and declaration I am
adding mine and exclaim :
" Long life to our dear ally England,
" Long life to heroic Serbian Army,
" Commander of the Company,
" Janachko a. Jovitch.
" 13/26 February, 1916.
" Ipsos (Corfu)."
CHAPTER X
THE " SLAVA DAY " OF THE SECOND
REGIMENT
The companies used to take turns at
working at the ports for about three weeks,
and when our turn came the men were
very pleased, as they much preferred it to
doing drill, and they were able to occa-
sionally get into the town also. We were
camped about a mile and a half outside
the town, but I thought it was the nastiest
camp that I had ever been in — a very
small crowded piece of ground with no
shade, so that when the weather was hot
we were perfectly roasted, and when it
230
" SLAVA DAY " 231
was wet, when you tried to climb up the
narrow steep path to it, you shpped back
two steps for one you went up, in the
thick sHppery mud.
I gave up my room in town, as our
camp was close enough to walk to. I
could make myself understood pretty well
in Serbian by now, though, of course, I
made awful mistakes, as it is by far the
most difficult language I have ever come
across to learn, there being no books to
help one. One can only pick it up by ear ;
so it is no wonder if I was occasionally
misunderstood.
One day I told my orderly to go and
fetch my thick coat, which he would find
on a chair in my room, and bring it to me
in camp. He duly arrived back about an
hour afterwards with the coat and the
Q2
232 " SLAVA DAY "
chair, which he had carried all through
the town, and was much discomfited at
the howls of laughter with which we all
greeted him. I asked him what the land-
lady had said to his removing her furniture
like that, and he confessed that she had
made a few remarks, but, as she spoke
nothing but Italian and he nothing but
Serbian, they passed lightly over his head,
and he triumphantly carried out what he
had taken to be my orders. He was a
capital orderly, always cheerful and willing.
One day he told me, in answer to sonie
remark of mine, that as my orderly he
would not have to fight. " Will you fight
with us going back to Serbia, like you did
in Albania ? " he asked. " Why, of course
I shall, Dragoutini," I said. His face
beamed. " Then I shall go with you and
" SLAVA DAY " 233
fight beside you," he declared emphati-
cally.
We went back to our camp in the hills
when our three weeks were up, and to oiu*
great joy we heard that we were to embark
almost immediately for Salonica.
They let us stay a day longer than was
intended in order to celebrate the regi-
mental " Slava day," which is a great
festival, and the whole regiment w^as en fete
for the whole day. The Crown Prince Alex-
ander himself came, and a great many French
and English officers and a few ladies.
It was held in a beautiful big, flat glade,
just below the camp, with huge big spread-
ing trees. There was a large marquee
decorated with all the different flags of
the Allies, and everybody had been busy
for the last week making paths and gene-
234 " SLAVA DAY "
rally beautifying the place, and practising
for the big march past of the regiment.
We had a variety of talent in our regi-
ment ; among others a young student of
sculpture. Building four high pillars of
clayey mud flanking the path leading to
the marquee, he carved on each a beautiful
bas-relief. The first one represented a
haggard, weary, beaten Serbian soldier
going into exile ; the next a Serbian soldier
re-equipped, holding his new rifle in his
hand, his expression full of fierce determi-
nation, standing in a striking attitude with
his face to the foe again ; while on a third
was the head of a woman with a look of
patient expectancy on her beautiful face,
representing the women who were waiting
in Serbia for the return of their sons and
husbands to deliver them from the bondage
" SLAVA DAY " 235
of the hated Austrian-Bulgarian oppressors.
They were most striking figures, and some
day that young Serbian soldier will become
known as a very great sculptor.
It was an ideal spot for a fete, and we
hoped anxiously that the weather, which
had looked rather threatening, would hold
up. The whole regiment was astir very
early, and we were all drawn up under the
trees before the guests arrived.
I was talking to the Colonel, when he
suddenly asked me where my company
was drawn up.
"Just behind the Third," I rephed,
pointing over in that direction.
" Well, come over there with me, I want
to speak to them," he said, and we went
over, I wondering what he was going to
say, and was more than astonished when
236 " SLAVA DAY "
I found the surprise in store for me. They
all sprang to attention, and then, with me
standing by his side, he made them a long
speech, which all the other companies
round could hear also, and said that he
was promoting me to sergeant on that
their great regimental " Slava day."
Generally you are just promoted, and it is
entered in the books in the ordinary way,
and it was a very great honour to have a
public sort of ceremony like that, especially
on such a day. They all shouted " Jivio "
three times for me when he had finished,
and, though I felt extremely shy and
embarrassed, I was very much pleased.
All the officers in the regiment and a
great many of the men came up and shook
hands with me afterwards, and congratu-
lated me, and the Commander of the
" SLAVA DAY " 237
battalion sent his orderly off for some
spare stars which he had, and fixed
my second ones on my shoulders there
and then.
Later on the General of the First Army,
who was one of the guests, when he heard
I was one of his soldiers, also added his
congratulations ; in fact, I have never in
my life had so much handshaking and
patting on the back.
Presently the Crown Prince arrived and
the rest of the guests. The whole regi-
ment, headed by the band and the regi-
mental flag, marched past him and saluted,
and to see these fine healthy-looking
fellows, with their swinging stride, you
would never have guessed they were the
same men who had gone through that
terrible retreat in the Albanian mountains
238 " SLAVA DAY "
and arrived at Corfu in such a deplorable
condition two months before.
The guests all sat down to lunch in the
big marquee, and after that there were
songs, dancing, etc. The Crown Prince
had to leave early, but said he would come
back again later on.
I had invited two of my friends from the
English hospital, and they enjoyed them-
selves immensely, and we all— guests,
officers and men — danced the " Kolo "
and all the other Serbian national dances
together until evening.
Later on there was another big lunch
and a great many speeches from the
representatives of the English, French and
Italian Allies. True to his promise Prince
Alexander came back later in the afternoon,
specially to chat with the soldiers, among
" SLAVA DAY " 239
whom he walked about in the friendUest
manner, enquiring after their families,
how they had been wounded, etc., etc.
It was easy to see how popular he is with
his Army, and how pleased and proud the
men were as they crowded round him.
We kept it up the whole day and late
that night after all the guests had gone,
in spite of the fact that we should have to
be astir very early next morning, as we
were to embark for Salonica.
We had a very hot, dusty tramp dow^n
to the embarking stage, and I had very
bad luck, as I lost my dog " Mah," who
was a most faithful little brute, though it
would be hard to describe his breed. He
was a stray who had attached himself to
an officer and afterwards been handed
over to me, and he was always at my heels,
240 " SLAVA DAY "
never quitting me for a moment and
sleeping in my tent. Even when I was
dancing the previous day he had nearly
upset several people in his anxiety to keep
close to me. It was only about half an
hour before the boat sailed that I missed
him. In the immense crowd of soldiers
he had lost sight of me for a moment, and
then could not trace me, and someone
eventually told me that they had seen
him starting back along the hot, dusty
road to camp looking for me, and,
as I dared not miss the boat on his
account, I had reluctantly to give up the
search.
The boat w^as a fine French Trans-
atlantic boat, but the first day out at sea
w^as very rough, and the men, who are
anything but good sailors, lay about
" SLAVA DAY " 241
prostrate, declaring that they would rather
have ten days' continuous battle on land
than one day on board ship.
However, Easter Sunday was very fine,
and we all landed next day quite fit at
Salonica. Our camp was up on the hills
about seventeen miles from the town. It
was a lovely place, and had the further
advantage of having a spring of very good
mineral water, which was a great luxury,
as the drinking water around Salonica is
not good as a rule.
The transportation of the Serbian Army
from Corfu to Salonica was going on
apace, and within a few weeks the whole
force w^as safely landed without a single
casualty.
The men were fully equipped down to
the very last button— new English khaki
242
SLAVA DAY "
uniforms, belts, rifles, water-bottles, abso-
lutely everything.
I went home on a couple of months'
leave, leaving them full of spirits, and
eagerly looking forward to the time when
we could get another whack at the enemy,
and march victoriously back into Serbia ;
and with any luck I hope some day to be
able to describe how we accomplished it,
and the triumphal entry into Nish which
we are always talking about.
Printed in England by W. H. Smith & Son. The Arden Press.
Stamford Street London. S.E.
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